If AHS had a dollar for every time they lied about "investing in staffing," they might actually be able to afford a functioning EMS system. But since they don’t, and since Edmonton is somehow managing to operate with a hiring strategy that looks like it was devised by a drunk raccoon, here we are—again—breaking down just how bad things have gotten. Spoiler alert: it’s bad.
This post is packed with brutal numbers, FOIP data, and receipts that will make AHS management sweat through their fancy embroidered gold epaulettes that they do not deserve. But before we dive in, consider throwing a few bucks our way—$5, $10, $15—whatever amount brings you joy knowing that it funds more hard-hitting posts and wildly pisses off AHS leadership. Seriously, they hate this. Our GiveSendGo link is right here: https://www.givesendgo.com/GC4M8.
Alright, let’s get into it. Edmonton paramedics, welcome to the disaster that is your staffing situation.
There is no clearer sign of a system in peril than its people—or, more specifically, how many people that system is throwing into the fire, how many they’re scrambling to replace, and how many they’re desperately hoping will ignore reality and “rise to the challenge.”
After over a decade of treating their paramedics with something that could be mistaken for disdain (but for politeness, we’ll call it indifference), we decided to check in on Edmonton Metro to see how things were going there. And—shocking absolutely no one—they’re not going well. Colour us shocked.
Every day, Edmonton paramedics clock in to what, much like everywhere else in the province, is now commonly referred to as a staffing crisis. So, what does AHS do when faced with a staffing crisis? Hire aggressively? Plan for the future? Support their workforce? Implement a plan take the load off the remaining staff so they don't burn out? Oh, no. That would make sense.
Instead, we checked the numbers, because AHS is constantly peacocking about how much hiring they’re doing to “meet demand.” Since 2019, here’s what they’ve managed for
Edmonton Metro:
👉 Regular full-time hires: 56. That’s it. Over six years—many of which have been the busiest in EMS history—they hired 56 full-time paramedics.
👉 Part-time hires: 4. Yes, four. Not a typo, and 2 Temporary Part-Time... Two.... Just two......
👉 Temporary full-time hires: 194. Remember this number. It’ll be crucial when we compare it to injuries later.
So far, not exactly the big numbers AHS keeps bragging about. But wait, there’s more!
👉 Casual hires: 488. Yes, four hundred and eighty-eight casuals—those elusive creatures who enjoy the rare luxury of saying, “No, we’d prefer Monday to Thursday. No, we don’t do weekends. And absolutely not working Christmas. New Years eve? What are you smoking!?”
Every zone we see a system drowning in casuals, we see the same pattern: an AHS EMS disaster that some donkey in gold epaulettes swears is completely under control. If this is what “under control” looks like, we’d hate to see their definition of chaos. Want to add insult to injury? Those casual hires? Those bright shiny favourablfde statistics for AHS? Of the 488 a huge chunk of them were once Full time but dropped to Casual because they could not handle the utter incompetence anymore.
One of the most infuriating things AHS keeps telling the media is how amazing their hiring is. “Our hiring is up 19%! We’re not incompetent! In fact, we’re actually doing a fantastic job! Look, we even have a framed piece of paper from a nameless masters degree program to prove what great leaders we are!” Well, that’s adorable. Some Fisher Price my first participation ribbon stuff! But let’s take another look at those casual numbers. Over six years, AHS has hired 488 new casuals. Impressive, right? Wrong. Because here’s the part they won’t mention: 382 of those “new hires” were actually full-time paramedics who dropped to casual. (FYI AHS EMS, if this story goes to the media you might want to cool it on telling everyone about your national and international hiring campaign or we'll tell the truth about that too. We have the numbers! We know how untrue that is. Don't make us expose you. Again.)
Let that sink in—382 paramedics walked away from full-time positions, but thanks to a little bureaucratic magic, AHS gets to count them as new hires. The process goes like this: a full-timer quits, AHS generates a brand-new casual job number, and voilà—suddenly, it looks like they’ve hired someone instead of, you know, hemorrhaging their full-time workforce.
This is how leadership keeps up the illusion that they’re doing an incredible job, when in reality, they are absurdly bad at it. But hey, at least they’ve got that fancy office decoration to remind them how great they think they are. It only represents 78% of the people they've hired as casuals, no big deal....
What’s worse—because yes, it always gets worse—is that AHS loves to strut around bragging about how many people they’re hiring. But as one Edmonton medic put it:
"Oh sure, they onboard 20 people a month… and maybe five of them survive to the six-month mark? Yeah, retention here is abysmal." AHS “leadership” (and we use that term loosely) has no real explanation for this. But we do! When you treat your staff like garbage, work them into the ground, and create a culture so toxic that even new hires take one look around and go, “Oh hell no,” you end up with a retention crisis.
Yet every month, like clockwork, AHS proudly announces: "Look! We hired 10-20 new recruits!"—as if that’s the flex they think it is. Meanwhile, every single paramedic is left muttering, "Cool. Another batch of TFTs. Let’s take bets on how long they last." Here’s the real kicker: management probably thinks, “Well, if they left, they just weren’t cut out for this job.” But maybe—just maybe—it’s time for some introspection when your own full-time workforce watches their colleagues quit with envy, only to return as casuals making the same hourly rate without the joy of being trapped in an understaffed, hellish night shift (more on that later).
How about. the Paramedics that the system has truly lost? Well thats a story onto itself! In six years, 14 paramedics have hung up their stethoscopes, retired, and collected their pensions. Bravo to those 14—they made it out.
Now, in that same time frame? 122 paramedics didn’t retire. They didn’t stick it out. They just said, “You know what? I’m done,” and walked away from their careers with AHS entirely.
Because eventually, we all get tired of the donkeys swearing “It’ll get better!” while doing absolutely nothing to make it better. But seeing that 122 paramedics in Edmonton alone hit their breaking point and bailed? That’s not just bad—that’s absurd. What do they give up when they walk away from those positions? Friends, benefits, a pension, and all the years they pour into this career to learn this trade, just like that gone. Poof. All because of managerial incompetence.
This is where That silly Leadership course, something about a leader in health care that everyone takes should probably include a little basic arithmetic—because if these people want to wave around a fancy piece of paper and call themselves "leaders," they should at least know how to count.
Let’s break it down: 14 people retired. 122 people quit outright. 382 full-timers bailed to go casual. And how many did AHS hire to replace them? 56. That’s not just an oversight—it’s a mathematical crisis. And if any manager wants to email us requesting a calculator, we’d be more than happy to dip into our donation pool to buy them one if it means they might finally figure out how numbers work, but they have to promise to lay off the kool aid.
For those of you who do understand math: in six years, AHS has replaced only 10% of the medics they’ve lost in Edmonton—and they’re still scratching their heads, wondering why their new hires are running for the exits.
We’d love to say we’re done handing out well-earned lashings over staffing, but oh no, we’re just getting started. Remember those 194 Temporary Full-Timers? The one glimmer of hope in this black hole of managerial incompetence? Well, let’s go ahead and snuff that out like a candle in a windstorm.
We looked into how many paramedics in Edmonton have been off on a WCB injury for more than 90 days—aka, the threshold for triggering a Temporary Full-Time position. When we crunched the numbers, we found that in the last six years, that total was 490. So, in classic AHS fashion, the Donkeys hired 194 Temporary Full-Timers to cover 490 long-term WCB absences. That’s 39%. For an organization that loves to tell the media how much they’re “investing in staffing,” they sure have a funny way of defining “covering your workforce.”
Alright, we’ll admit it—we made a tiny oversight in this post. We forgot to ask AHS for two key pieces of information: casual utilization and overtime utilization.
Why does this matter? Well, in other zones—especially Calgary—we already know these numbers are downright damning. Discretionary work (aka "please, for the love of God, pick up another shift") makes up nearly a third of all filled shifts there. And if there's one thing AHS is good at, it’s being predictably bad across the board, so we’d wager Edmonton follows the same disastrous trend.
But if you don’t feel like waiting for FOIP requests, just look at the numbers:
January 2024: 90% staffed
February: 89% staffed
March: 90% staffed
April: 91% staffed
May: 88% staffed
June: 87% staffed
July: 88% staffed
August: 87% staffed
September: 87% staffed
October: 90% staffed
November: 89% staffed
December: 89% staffed
And now lets compare that to Calgary and you will notice that our hypothesis likely holds water:
If our data holds up, it explains why Friday and Saturday nights, long weekends—and basically every holiday—turn into a full-blown disaster. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that because Edmonton has lost so many full-time Paramedics our data has to be true or the situation would somehow be even worse! Monday-to-Friday day shifts? Not bad. Sundays? Manageable. But every long weekend, holiday, and weekend night? Absolute carnage. Yet AHS keeps up the illusion of "great staffing" because they hover near 90% coverage overall. Those nights where staffing drops to 60–75%? Just "outliers" to them. But every paramedic knows: outliers are where patients suffer the most. One of them was so sick of these weekend disasters that they wanted their story attached to this story:
This is why we say the Donkeys have blood on their hands. When nearly a third of your workforce is picking up shifts on a whim, you’re one bad weekend away from total collapse. And let’s be clear—this isn’t a dig at casuals. They’re the smart ones. If anything, their very existence proves our point: the Donkeys running AHS EMS have no idea what they’re doing, and thats why there are so many casuals! So, now that we’ve established that staffing is a flaming dumpster fire, you’d think AHS would at least be squeezing every ounce of efficiency out of the paramedics who do manage to show up, right? That would be the logical thing to do in a crisis, wouldn’t it? Well… no, actually. Instead, AHS sticks to its greatest hits: lying and gaslighting. They love to brag about all the "amazing" things they’ve done to fix the problem, but let’s talk about everyone’s favourite lie—that crews are clearing hospitals quickly.
We checked the numbers in Edmonton (because someone has to), and surprise, surprise: thousands of transports, thousands of hours of offload delays. EMS crews are rotting away in hospital hallways, doing anything but their actual job—which, just to remind everyone, is providing emergency medical care to the community. In December alone 6772 transports to hospitals translated 3313 hours of triage saying "I have to park you" exceeding the 45 minuet rule; furthermore 1839 hours in offload delay where Paramedics were stuck rotting in the hallways for so long they had to mark themselves in offload delay. This is why we say EMS isn’t health care—it’s AHS jamming a square health care peg into a round public safety hole while telling us all to just believe harder that it fits rather than saying EMS is actually public safety and that Paramedics parked in the hallway is a disservice to the broader public.
So, they lie. Shocking. If you’ve been following along, you’ll remember our deep dive into Calgary’s “Orange is the New Red” fiasco—where AHS quietly tweaked the definition of a Red Alert to make it look like things weren’t a complete catastrophe. But when you actually dig into the Orange Alerts? Oh boy, they are ugly. If you missed that story, here’s a refresher:The Great Red Alert Drop – AHS’s Spin, Gaslighting, and Leadership in Crisis Mode
So, what about Edmonton? Same disaster, different city. Turns out, AHS pulled the exact same trick here. Red Alerts are artificially suppressed thanks to yet another stupid and disingenuous policy. As one dispatcher put it when they spoke to us, “they’ve made it nearly impossible to go into a Red Alert.” So let’s take a look at those Edmonton numbers, shall we?
If you just glanced at the data, you might think AHS EMS deserves a standing ovation. A whole year went by, and Edmonton only had 74 instances where there were no ambulances available. Wow, amazing work, team! Except… yeah, no. We don’t do applause for Donkeys who lie and manipulate data to favour their performance or lack there of. In fact, we think the government should strongly consider firing the lot of them. Because, as we’ve said before: Orange is the new Red. So why don’t we take a peek at those Orange Alerts and see what’s really going on?
One year. 15,578 Orange Alerts. That’s 1,298 times a month where Edmonton was just a breath away from having zero ambulances left. In July and December the city spent over 31 hours like that with 1613, and 1707 instances of Orange alerts respectively. For context, an Orange Alert means there are only one, two, or three ambulances left to cover the entire city. Oof. Not great. Here’s where it gets even worse—this is when AHS starts playing the delay game, holding EMS calls in pending instead of dispatching ambulances. So, instead of fixing the problem, they just pretend it doesn’t exist.
You know who can’t pretend this isn’t happening? The patients—a.k.a. the biggest losers in this disaster. In 2024, 14,536 people in Edmonton were left waiting for an ambulance during an emergency. That’s over 1,200 people a month on average and finished the year off in December with 1727 being shuffled off to your having an emergency but.... limbo. That all being said though, we're sure we are going to hear more from AHS management about how much they’re “improving.” Maybe before we start handing out participation trophies, we should ask those 1,200 people each month how they feel about waiting for help that never comes fast enough.
And just to twist the knife further, these delays aren’t even medically justified. AHS EMS relies on a triaging system they already know is garbage at predicting patient severity. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good PR campaign?Source: Canadian Paramedicine Research And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse—let’s talk downgrades. These are ambulances that should be staffed at an Advanced Life Support (ALS) level but get knocked down to Basic Life Support (BLS) because, shocker, there aren’t enough trained paramedics left. Now, we’re not here to say that a BLS ambulance isn’t better than no ambulance at all (because, well, obviously), but the sheer volume of downgrades is yet another flashing neon sign that EMS “leadership” has completely failed.
Why does this matter? Because these downgrades mean experienced ALS paramedics have fled this disaster of a system. These are people who spent years in school, years gaining experience, were abused by AHS EMS, and then said, "Nope, not worth it." If EMS was even remotely well-run, we wouldn’t be seeing downgrades at this scale. But when you run a system into the ground, you don’t just lose staff—you lose critical care.
Over the past year, Edmonton racked up 11,985 downgrades—that’s nearly 1,000 times a month where an ambulance that should have been ALS showed up as BLS instead. Why does this matter? Because when a BLS crew arrives on scene and the patient actually needs ALS care, well… good luck, time to drive real fast.
This isn’t about blaming PCPs—they’re out there delivering excellent care every single day. The problem is that AHS EMS has mismanaged staffing so badly that paramedics aren’t being set up for success. Their ability to provide the best possible care is being sabotaged, not by their own skills, but by a system that has been run straight into the ground through utter incompetence by the people that they are supposed to call their "leaders". What happens after those BLS downgrades don't cut it though, and even those resources have been stretched to the limit? Rural crews get their favourite radio tones. "Please relocate. Relocate to Edmo-whatever station number".
So, we set out to look at how often Edmonton Zone ambulances were relocated to Metro for calls, but thanks to a classic FOIP miscommunication, we got different numbers instead. And honestly? What we found might be even worse.
In 2024 alone, ambulances not even assigned to Edmonton Metro handled 5,335 calls—that’s an average of 444 times a month where Edmonton was so short-staffed that they had to pull in outside units to complete Edmontons calls just to keep things running. When you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul this often, it’s safe to say the whole system is circling the drain.
It gets even dumber. Not only are Edmonton Zone units being pulled into the Metro sinkhole, but ambulances from far-flung rural areas—like Edson, Breton, and Wetaskiwin—were reassigned to Edmonton 121 times last year. If that wasn’t absurd enough, some of those units came from the North Zone, which is already a raging dumpster fire thanks to AHS EMS, as we exposed here:
🔗 Strike Teams and Shutdown Dreams So, let’s recap: Edmonton can’t manage its own resources, so Central and North Zones are getting left to carry the load to cover for Edmonton "leadership" teams failures. AHS EMS "leadership" couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag with a flashlight and a map, but sure, let’s keep pretending they have this under control.
When we spoke to medics from the surrounding areas, we were hit with the cold, hard truth: AHS EMS is absolutely thrilled to offload its incompetence onto neighboring communities. And even better? They do it with zero regard for how it screws over those communities, their ambulances, or their paramedics. If you ever needed proof that the donkeys in the AHS offices care about absolutely no one but themselves—and the continued existence of an EMS system that consistently fails literally everyone except the people “leading” it—look no further than quotes like these (some censorship applied to protect departments and identities):
“Over the last two nights, Edmonton Metro was understaffed by $% trucks.”(Translation: The actual number we were given shows over a dozen AHS ambulances were shut down. But don't worry, I’m sure ‘everything is fine.’)
“Our two ambulances did %@ calls total, and only # of them were in our jurisdiction. AHS was upgrading calls to pull in more resources.”(Reality check: This medic’s numbers showed that a glorious 26% of their calls were actually in their jurisdiction. The other 74%? Dragged into Edmonton’s dumpster fire.)
“AHS TRIES to relocate our ambulance into Edmonton every morning at 3 AM to cover their drop in peak hour trucks.”(Yep, you read that right. AHS EMS is so predictable in their failures that there’s a scheduled daily ambulance theft. Wild.)
“Our stats show 60% of our call volume is in our jurisdiction between two ambulances. This means our one ambulance is in Edmonton about 70-80% of the time.”(So if you live in this community and dial 911, flip a coin: heads, your ambulance is in Edmonton, tails, your ambulance is still in Edmonton.)
For those of you reading from Calgary Zone, these numbers probably sound painfully familiar. Okotoks, Priddis, Cochrane, Airdrie—you get it. AHS EMS’s version of regional support is less “helping hands” and more mandatory organ donation. The borderless system works! If you're the city screw everywhere else
The hardest pill to swallow about the Edmonton Zone? Oh, that’s an easy one. Surrounding Edmonton are several municipalities where EMS is run by the local fire department as an integrated service. Free of the incompetence of AHS EMS's Donkeys. When we dive into the numbers and look at their staffing? Compared to AHS EMS? Phenomenal. Absolutely night and day. We could go on for hours about why that is, but here’s the bottom line: AHS EMS has no excuse for their disastrous staffing. More to the point? Those staffing numbers? They're not pulling a third of their staff from casual pools and overtime, they're full-timers! Something AHS EMS can only dream of! Perhaps thats why AHS abuses them so bad, really wants to lower that job satisfaction as low as it can go, just like they do to their staff!
Of course, they’ll try to tell us a plethora of reasons why this is. Oh, they’ll cook up all sorts of excuses. They’ll even go so far as to lie and gaslight the public into believing there’s nothing wrong with their internal operations(there is). But numbers don’t lie. The integrated services manage to staff their ambulances. And AHS? Well, let’s just say if falling flat on your face was an Olympic sport, they’d be bringing home the gold—consistently. The reality though, take the fire based systems and look where their landing in terms of staffing, 96% on average, AHS EMS? not so much.
This situation is completely out of control, and the Government of Alberta needs to pull its head out of the sand immediately and take real, decisive action. The EMS system is collapsing under the weight of managerial incompetence, and instead of stepping in to fix it, the government is letting the same failed leadership stay in power. Worse, they’re actively ignoring the crisis—pretending it will magically resolve itself while Albertans suffer.
Let’s be clear: this negligence isn’t new. The government made a critical error when they under-resourced EMS going into a pandemic—because who could have possibly predicted that a global health crisis would increase demand for ambulances? Maybe that’s why Jason Kenney got the well-deserved heave-ho, and why Edmonton didn’t send a single UCP MLA to the legislature in the last election. But instead of learning from that disaster, they’re making another catastrophic mistake in real time by letting this entire managerial team continue running EMS so incompetently that it’s starting to feel like they’re placing bets on how fast they can crash the system.
But make no mistake: this negligence won’t just go away. If the government refuses to step up and fire the people responsible, then they should be the ones shown the door next. EMS was a key issue in the last election, and yet here we are, watching the same disastrous leadership drive it even further into the ground.
So here’s our message to every MLA in Alberta: Enough is enough. The time for reviews, half-measures, and empty promises is over. The province needs to start actively firing the EMS executives and managers who created this mess—immediately. Paramedics are leaving, ambulances are sitting empty, and Albertans are paying the price. If this government won’t do what’s necessary, then they shouldn’t be surprised when voters decide they’re the next ones out the door.
So, to recap: Edmonton’s EMS staffing situation is an absolute train-wreck. AHS has mastered the art of bureaucratic trickery, repackaging resignations as “new hires” and calling a sinking ship seaworthy while their workforce jumps overboard. And yet, if you ask leadership, everything is going according to plan.
If you want to help us keep exposing this disaster—one Freedom of Information request, one deep dive, and one merciless takedown at a time—consider tossing a few dollars our way at GiveSendGo. Even small donations make a huge impact, keeping this work alive and ensuring AHS management loses even more sleep over it. We call that money well spent.
Comments