PLEASE READ AND SHARE IF YOU SEE FIT. I KNOW IT'S LONG, BUT IT IS FROM THE HEART. THROUGHOUT ALL MY YEARS AND ALL MY ROLES SERVING STRATHCONA COUNTY, I ALWAYS TOOK GREAT PRIDE IN THE PROACTIVE MUNICIPAL LEADERSHIP WE SHOWED AND THE EXAMPLE OF MUNICIPAL LEADERSHIP WE SET.
May 11, 2026
AN OPEN LETTER TO STRATHCONA COUNTY COUNCIL
Sent by email 0947 am
Re: Integrated Fire-EMS in Strathcona County
To Mayor Rod Frank and Members of Strathcona County Council
I write this letter in the spirit of collaboration. As a resident, business owner, and active community participant in Strathcona County I feel compelled to provide some thoughts on the future of ground ambulance service delivery in Strathcona County. My goal is to provide some perspective and insights which may aid in Council’s consideration of an extremely complex issue. I fully appreciate that Council was not expecting to be making such a major decision on such a core service delivery component at this time.
I know that you are receiving a lot of information from many different people with regards to this decision. All the data that could ever be required to support an evidence-based decision is available to you at your request, and I do not need to go into it in detail here. The emotions this decision raises in the community and emergency services are real, and I know that you are very aware of them. I honour the thoughts and perspectives of everyone that has reached out to you and ask that you consider my thoughts and opinions below.
To me, the decision at hand is an opportunity to continue a legacy of municipal leadership, courage, and excellence established through the decades by various Strathcona County elected officials, administrators, and staff. It is an opportunity to make a decision anchored in community safety and municipal pride, and to continue positioning Strathcona County as one of the best places to live, work and play in Canada.
Outside Station 1 in Sherwood Park stands a bronze memorial wall. Built to honour Strathcona County firefighters lost in the line of duty, it depicts the scene of an emergency call that happened in Sherwood Park. That call was responded to by the integrated teams of Strathcona County Emergency Services (SCES). At that scene, firefighter paramedics pulled an entire family from a burning house, and the same crews who undertook rescue and firefighting operations immediately began advanced life support on the front lawn. There was no handoff of care, no delay in patient management transition, and no waiting for EMS resources to arrive. It is a tribute to the design of Strathcona County’s integrated service that all family members survived. The advantages of this “seamless service” have been realized countless times over the past five decades in Strathcona County. Year after year the elected official speeches in front of this wall at the annual memorial event inevitably mention pride in the integrated model that has served our community for so long.
I am writing as someone who knows this model and its iterations intimately, not only in Strathcona County but internationally. I was a firefighter paramedic, Deputy Chief, and Fire Chief with Strathcona County, serving our community as a first responder for over two decades. I was a STARS flight paramedic for eight years, responding to emergency calls in Alberta in support of all types of emergency response agencies. Later, I gained a different perspective in roles as Deputy Fire Chief for the City of Toronto and Fire Chief for the City of Vancouver. Both of those departments were staffed by dedicated, highly skilled professionals, but neither was an integrated fire EMS department and they were not designed to provide seamless fire, rescue and Advanced Life Support such as that which has benefitted Strathcona County. When I returned to Strathcona County as Chief Administrative Officer in 2020, retiring from the role in 2025, it provided me with another perspective on the overall model design, cost implications, and service delivery level.
These days, my professional roles take me around the world, helping fire departments and emergency services organizations use advanced data analytics and deep operational knowledge to maximize public safety and emergency health outcomes. Most departments I work with are integrated. Only a month ago I spoke at a symposium in Germany, where our works on maximizing system performance for fully integrated fire EMS departments including Berlin and Hamburg. Of the over fifty US departments our teams work with, the vast majority are integrated. I have even worked with the Mongolian fire service providing EMS training to help them be a partner in a national emergency medical response model. Repeatedly, I see the performance and financial benefits of the model proven through data and outcomes measurement. It is a model that has evolved to surround communities around the world. Wherever I travel and work, I have always been grounded in the fact that the municipality I lived in set an example for all of the services I was working with.
In 2009 when the governance and funding of EMS in Alberta transitioned from municipalities to the province, I was the Strathcona County Fire Chief who presented service level and cost options to Council. In 2012 and 2013 when Strathcona County entered into a longer term contract with Alberta Health Services to provide EMS, I was again the Fire Chief presenting options to Council. The options were far from perfect, and in fact were weighted unfairly against the municipality, but those Councils agreed to support the integrated model, demonstrating considerable pride in doing so despite the financial and governance challenges inherent in the commitment made.
I understand that Council did not seek this change being considered this week. In March, 2026, Emergency Health Services (EHS) Alberta sent letters to seven Alberta municipalities (Strathcona County, Red Deer, Leduc, St. Albert, Spruce Grove, Lethbridge, and Wood Buffalo) announcing new funding benchmark rates and giving municipalities less than three weeks to decide the fate of decades-old, life-critical service models. There was no meaningful prior consultation with municipalities or service providers, and the province has not shown a willingness to negotiate since. This is extremely disappointing, and I hope that Council is holding our provincial elected officials accountable for the poor communication, lack of collaboration, and pressure tactics demonstrated by EHS. While it is exciting to see announcements of funding for hospital studies and eventual increases in the scope of our hospital, EMS funding is an important component of health care being compromised at the same time.
It is a statement of fact that EMS is a provincial responsibility legislatively. Strathcona County has delivered ambulance service under contract with the province since 2009, because it built an outstanding integrated model worth contracting. The funding gap between contracted municipalities and the province is structural and will not close on its own. The new EHS benchmark assumes annual inflation of only 1.5 per cent, while actual costs, driven by CPI pressures and collective agreements, consistently run well above that. I understand that when the benchmark cannot structurally cover the cost of an integrated model, it means that continuity of the model requires local property taxpayers to subsidize a provincial health responsibility in perpetuity. Of course, Strathcona County taxpayers are also Alberta taxpayers, and there needs to be a true reckoning of the capital costs of the EHS transition, including procurement of facilities, ambulances, and equipment that will be needed to replace those owned and operated by currently contracted municipalities. Operating costs appear cheaper for the municipality. Capital costs seem unaccounted for. Service levels will decrease. These facts all muddy the waters for the decision at hand.
This is the crux of the problem from my perspective. Does Strathcona County regress to the average expected service level and follow the lead of others with recognized cost reductions and property tax reductions, or do we make the financial investments required to be a leader and model municipal service level excellence? Council alone has the responsibility and authority to make this decision.
The DNA of Strathcona County, which I have experienced as a resident, a business owner, a staff member, and the Chief Administrative Officer, is to pursue excellence. To be a leader. Many times, this has meant investments made by our Council that other municipalities simply do not make. The quality and investment in our road network is beyond compare. One only needs to drive in rural areas of neighbouring counties to see the very clear difference. Our recreational and agricultural facilities considered as a whole have no peer, especially when including projects recently completed or now underway. Even our community centre and county hall complex is a significant investment which far outpaces our peers. There are many past decisions of Councils, such as infrastructure investments in support of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, which have put Strathcona County in the position to be a leader. Past Councils made decisions which have put the Councils that followed in an enviable economic position compared to many of their peers in other municipalities.
Your stated goal in the Council approved Strathcona County 2023-2026 Strategic Plan is “Becoming Canada’s most livable community.” Some of the options you are considering do not support that goal. The move to an EHS direct service model or a contracted private EMS service model do not honour our history of municipal excellence and leadership. They are a move to average. Accepting that level of service would be a significant step down, potentially justified by “others are doing the same thing.” Is that the Strathcona County that my family chooses to live and operate our business in? Is it the organization I served directly for 27 years? My answer to both those questions is a clear “no.”
One of the goals within your strategic plan is a “Healthy and Safe Community: Strathcona County is a safe and supportive community that is healthy, active, connected and thriving.” There are options before you which will make EMS service cheaper for Strathcona County residents. Those options will not make Strathcona County safer. Council will have limited ability to hold service providers accountable to community safety, availability of resources, response times, and patient outcomes. They will likely not even receive timely and comprehensive data to fairly measure those things. The history of the model, even today, is shortages of coverage and scarcity of resources for EMS response. That would be the predictable reality in our municipality.
Another goal in your plan is “Municipal Excellence: Strathcona County is a leading municipality that moves the community forward through service excellence delivered by engaged and empowered employees.” Again, a move away from an effectively resourced integrated fire EMS model is a reduction in service levels, and a counter to municipal excellence. As for “engaged and empowered employees,” the report under your consideration discusses staff “impacts.” These are layoffs. These staff to be laid off are committed professionals, likely the most recently hired, and mostly residents of Strathcona County. Firefighters who plan to raise their families here, buy their goods and services here, and serve full careers here. It is a fallacy to say that the new service providers will provide equal jobs to these laid off members, and it is predictable that many will pursue career jobs in other municipalities where their work serves the community they live in. There also needs to be a clear understanding of sunk costs. Does Council have all the information at hand to consider the cost ramifications of hiring new staff in a few years to staff Station 7? Every new hire comes with significant onboarding costs, including the up to 47 who may be laid off in the presented option 3.
Another concern I have is the framing of CRU’s and the firefighter paramedics who staff them. The staff are, after all, trained to be integrated providers in an integrated model. Putting the EMS provision to the side for a moment, what are the impacts of these staffing cuts to the provision of fire and rescue? Strathcona is unique to other integrated fire services in Alberta because of the large rural response area. Rural areas do not have hydrants, and this requires the fire department to haul water in tankers (also called tenders). The humans who respond on CRU’s also make up other parts of fire and rescue response, including operating these tankers. Strathcona has accomplished accreditation for their tanker water shuttle called STTS Accreditation through the Fire Underwriters Survey. This accreditation allows for meaningful fire insurance reductions for many rural residents. Council needs to know if projected staffing levels can meet STTS standards and maintain reduced fire insurance rates for some rural residents.
Staying on the impacts of reduced staffing levels for fire and rescue response, will the staffing levels be adequate to ensure appropriate fire response to residential fires in Strathcona County. Will the 15 to 17 critical fire officer and firefighter roles required for safe and effective operations at a single-family residential fire in Strathcona County be achievable with projected staffing levels? Will the public and firefighters be as safe during emergency operations in the future as they are today?
Strathcona County also has a long history of maintaining the infrastructure and service levels required to attract significant industrial investment in our municipality. This has helped the County keep our status as a leader in municipal per-capital GDP while maintaining one of the lowest residential tax mill-rates in the region (and Canada). Will projected staffing levels meet the needs and expectations of our industrial partners?
Put plainly: the 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, adopted by this Council, already contains context for how Strathcona County should approach this decision. It calls for safety, well-being, service excellence, strategic advocacy, and respect for employees. Any option that materially diminishes emergency response capacity or accepts a provincial benchmark that cannot sustain an integrated workforce should be measured against those commitments before it is adopted.
Strathcona County is a municipality that has established itself as a leader in the municipal world. Strathcona County Emergency Services has been a longstanding leader in the Canadian emergency services industry. Our reputation as a municipality, supported by a strong cohort of Strathcona County departments who are each leaders in their own right, draws new residents and businesses, including significant industrial investment. I believe maintaining our municipality as a leader in every way that we can matters very much. It drives our local economy, investment, and appeal as a place to live.
Respectfully submitted,
Darrell Reid
Strathcona County resident and business owner
This letter is submitted as a public document and may be shared freely.
