I’m gripped by a serious case of envy. Not the Freudian kind, thankfully, but the kind that has me looking at another profession and its professional organization in a kind of muted awe. I know it’s a cliché, but it seems to me that while some other professions are making great strides and advances on the labour front, EMS somehow manages to continually take two steps back for every single step forward—or at best, we hold the line. The advances are there, but they get lost in the rearward shuffle of progress. Like a trout fisherman fly-fishing on the Cowichan or the Miramichi or the Saugeen Rivers that hooks into a 20-foot great white shark, we may think we’ve hooked into our dream, but there’s an uncertain surprise waiting for us at the other end of our tippet!

Take, for instance, the recent inclusion of paramedics into the list of public safety occupations (PSO). On the surface, it’s an impressive achievement. Years of hard work by the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C. CUPE Local 873, the Paramedic Association of Canada (PAC) and many other union locals across the country, has finally paid dividends on their investment of blood, sweat, time and tears. That was March 2005. But here we are almost a full year later and as a profession we have yet to see any concrete incarnation of tangible improvements to retirement benefits for paramedics in this country. No early retirement provisions. No “25-and-out” schemes. And while the 2.33% pension accrual rate has been extended to all in the PSO (not just fire) by the new legislation, it now falls to the government, employers and the unions to negotiate these early retirement packages and to implement the increased pension accrual rate (from 2% to 2.33% of pensionable earnings) with or without the use of supplemental plans.

Now, one might think that since the former Liberal government was wise enough and benevolent enough to embed paramedics into the list of PSO in the Income Tax Act alongside police officers, fire fighters, correctional officers, air traffic controllers and airline pilots, then it is all but a done deal. But, that is not the case.

In fact, in Ontario, Bill 206: The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act seeks to download the costs of managing the civil service retirement plan to the municipalities. The government is trying to get out of being the plan sponsor, replacing the model with one where the employer and the members act jointly as sponsors. The unions, together with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, oppose the legislation in its current form for a variety of valid reasons. The union wants those covered by the plan to have more say and stewardship over it, but doesn’t like the proposed modifications. In the ruckus created by CUPE Ontario, paramedics and other PSO appear to be set up as an unworthy elite.

In a statement on the union’s web site dated January 20, 2006, Brian O’Keefe, secretary-treasurer of CUPE Ontario, said, “OMERS has been based on fairness to all members, but Bill 206 will bring that to an end.” He continued, “The political deal-making has created supplemental benefits that will allow a minority — mostly higher paid men — enhanced benefits locked in forever. While the lower paid — mostly female members — are locked out of benefits they may deserve.”

We are left to interpret his remarks—along with CUPE Ontario’s prime time radio spots—as being anti-PSO, and by extension, anti-paramedic. After fighting so hard to convince the federal government of our worthiness for inclusion into the list of Public Safety Occupations, we now seemingly face opposition from those who represent our labour interests.

Lest you think that Mr. O’Keefe was representing his own independent view, Sid Ryan on November 18, 2005, wrote in his weekly column for the Toronto Sun, “I do not begrudge police and firefighters the right to negotiate better benefits for their members. But, I do object to the discriminatory double standard McGuinty is showing by denying those same basic rights to low-paid workers in OMERS.” Which basic rights? Early retirement? If that is what Mr. Ryan means, then clearly we did not target the right group of people with our educational objectives and lobbying efforts. These efforts should have been directed towards the head of CUPE Ontario and all of the other provincial and national EMS labour leadership, as well as to our elected provincial representatives—not just the MPs in Ottawa.

The issue has become muddled. On November 17, 2005, the CUPE Ambulance Committee of Ontario made a submission on behalf of the province’s paramedics to the legislative committee responsible for amending the Act in support of early retirement provisions. Then on February 3, 2006, CACO released a statement saying, “Despite past assurances, the provincial government has refused to support a change to Bill 206 to extend early retirement to paramedics. According to Brad Duguid, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal affairs, the issue would be left to the new Sponsor’s Corporation to decide. However, under the Bill, such a change would require 2/3 majority approval in order to pass.” Historically, this is a virtual impossibility to obtain.

Early retirement as a benefit extended to workers within the Public Safety Occupations is designed to achieve two goals: it recognizes the unique physical and emotional demands and perils of the uncontrolled environment in which we must work and it acknowledges the threat to public safety posed by ageing workers within these job classifications. It is not a perq or a luxury for an elite few. It is an essential means to protect and maintain public safety. To quote a technical interpretation bulletin from the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency: “The more generous early retirement eligibility criteria for public safety occupations recognize work situations where the limitations associated with ageing are common and have the potential to significantly endanger the safety of the general public. These special rules are intended to assist employers who, out of concern for public safety, wish to encourage or require employees in these occupations to retire early. The special rules are not provided on the basis of the riskiness of the occupation itself.”

A confusing message is being sent out to the people of Ontario and to paramedics by government, the media and by the unions. Contributing to this problem is that paramedics typically belong to unions where they only form a part—sometimes a very small part—of the represented group of workers. In British Columbia, all paramedics belong to one province-wide union local, which in many ways is the enviable model to which we should all aspire. Elsewhere, paramedics are lumped in with sanitation workers, nurses, health care aids, allied health workers, snow plow operators, grass cutters and the like. While these professions are entitled to enjoy effective representation as much as paramedics and other EMS workers, they do not share a common heritage or work culture with us. The situation in Ontario is less likely to occur in British Columbia.

Perhaps the most enviable professional body with regards to effective member representation is the International Association of Fire Fighters. The IAFF continually strives to raise the profile of the profession continent-wide. Fire fighters cast themselves in the most heroic of lights. They shamelessly promote their cause at every possible venue where politicians or the media may give them an audience and a voice. Granted, they do enormously good and popular deeds, and so the public is always willing to lend them an ear. Frontline fire fighters reap the rewards of such cohesiveness and unity.

The Canadian branch of the IAFF published their Canadian Legislative Fact Sheets for 2005. Their goals are simple: to improve national haz-mat and CBRN training; to establish a federal Public Safety Officer Compensation Benefit that would see the families of any of the PSO receive a sizeable death or disability benefit; to establish a national office for fire statistics; and to effect Canadian Pension Plan reform for professional fire fighters. All of these goals are laudable and obtainable. They improve the working conditions of fire fighters from a tangible perspective. They give peace of mind. They give security to the families of fire fighters. They are comprehensive in their simplicity and their scope. And they are of one voice.

One union speaking on behalf of all members. No derision. No dissent.

I am so envious I could die. Maybe that is why it’s called a deadly sin.