CANADIAN PARAMEDIC REGULATORS

Statement of Intent Regarding Labour Mobility for Paramedics

Communiqué #1 - Meeting of Paramedic Regulators from Across Canada
Communiqué #2 - Progress Report on Labour Mobility for Paramedics

Representatives of paramedic regulators from every province have discussed ways to ensure compliance with the new labour mobility requirements of the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), which become effective April 1 2009.  Currently more than 20 regulatory designations for paramedics exist over the 10 jurisdictions, involving different regulatory approaches and entry-to-practice requirements.

This document identifies a strategy to enable the regulators to achieve AIT compliance in the short term.  The regulators are planning additional meetings to identify ways to further enhance labour mobility in the longer term, including the possibility of further aligning designations and occupational standards.

Prior to April 1 2009, each regulator will use this document as a framework to work with their provincial government to maximize labour mobility in a manner that reflects the existence of some significant competency gaps across jurisdictions.

The regulators have identified four distinct occupational groupings within the profession of paramedicine:

• Emergency Medical Responder
• Primary Care Paramedic
• Advanced Care Paramedic
• Critical Care Paramedic

Each of the current regulatory designations, in general terms, aligns with one of these groupings.

The regulators have analyzed the current designations and agreed as follows:

• When the scopes of practice for the designations within each grouping are compared across jurisdictions, there are many equivalencies.  However between some designations there are significant competency gaps which, if not addressed, pose a material risk to public safety (see Appendix).

• Scope of practice equivalencies will enable Full Labour Mobility across jurisdictions for many paramedics, effective April 1, 2009, within the appropriate grouping.

• Where significant competency gaps exist, the regulators propose time-limited Legitimate Objective-based exceptions to Full Labour Mobility.  Such exceptions may result in restricted/conditional registration or other accommodation mechanisms in receiving jurisdictions effective April 1, 2009.

• The regulators propose to address competency gaps by making available short, standardized training modules, which (it is hoped) would be ready by October, 2009.  The training modules would be readily accessible to mobility registrants across the country.

• When training modules are available, provided that they are deemed “non-material”, Legitimate Objective-based exceptions to Full Labour Mobility would be removed.

• An inventory of available training modules is being created, and regulators will move quickly to complete this and publish details in a Web-based guide.