Gander airline president and mayor fear loss of jobs in plans to privatize air ambulance service

In a spacious maintenance facility, next door to the search and rescue squadron at Gander's airport, technicians are rebuilding a Beechcraft 1900D airplane. 

It's been stripped and refitted, and transformed so it's almost unrecognizable from the inside.

In the coming days, there will be a hands-free lift, standup cabin, lavatories, bariatric capabilities and beds.

In two weeks, it will fly to Ontario as its newest air ambulance, the third EVAS airplane contracted by that province.

"It's an amazing platform with a 52-inch door," says Patrick White, EVAS president and CEO. "It's turned into an extremely popular aircraft around the world for this purpose."

EVAS Air also uses two of these aircraft for air ambulances in Newfoundland and Labrador — for now. The provincial government's plan to privatize ambulance services could change all that.

The province issued a request for proposals in early December for a proponent to design, manage and operate a single, integrated road and air ambulance service. The deadline for responses was initially scheduled for later this month, but that has been extended until April.

Included in the document is the condition that air ambulance aircraft be based in St. John's and Happy Valley-Goose Bay — not Gander. 

"We've been doing air ambulance work here in the province just about 20 years now," said White, a former provincial government pilot.

"We've always advocated … that the main base for operations for all the paved runways in Newfoundland and Labrador should be Gander, and with the global pilot shortage, it's good to consolidate, especially your human resources, for the purposes of scheduling all in one place."

White says he's proud of the work his staff does with air ambulance services, and he has a great working relationship with the health-care leaders in the province. However, moving the aircraft to the province's capital, away from the rural patients who need it most, is puzzling to him.

"I believe it should have a very significant foothold in rural Newfoundland. After all, we're serving rural Newfoundland. Very few people in Paradise want an air ambulance to get to the Health Science Centre."

Gander Mayor Percy Farwell agrees.

"The priority should be getting the service to the patient as quickly as possible," he said. "That can be done much more efficiently and effectively out of Gander than out of St John's. It's ludicrous to have your resources stationed at the point of destination for an ambulance."

White and Farwell say the medical expertise in central Newfoundland can staff air ambulances now, and there's training in place at both the College of the North Atlantic and a new nursing school in Gander to train the workforce of the future.

In addition to the medical jobs associated with running the service, Gander is also set to lose dispatching jobs associated with running air ambulance services. While all air ambulance dispatchers are currently based in Gander, the RFP dictates the service will be moved to the St. John's area. It could mean the loss of up to 10 government jobs.

"This represents, first and foremost, a direct withdrawal of aerospace-related jobs — government jobs — from Gander, and placing them with essentially the private sector in St. John's," Farwell said. "You could do dispatch for these things from anywhere. Obviously, we're already doing that.

"We're a growing area here, but every time we turn around, rather than devoting our energies into capitalizing on that, and making this region, this province, stronger, we have to defend ourselves against things that seem to be targeting us to try to slow the place down. It's just very disheartening."

Health Minister Tom Osborne stands by the RFP. He says it was extended to allow more interested parties time for more comprehensive proposals. He says addendums to the RFP  based on feedback from proponents makes sense, but details in the RFP about such things as placement of the aircraft and the dispatch centre came from experts.

"The fairness advisors, the HEMS [helicopter emergency medical services] advisor, the technical advisor look at best practices in other jurisdictions, not only across Canada but globally, and provide us with a nonpolitical, non-biased point of view in terms of what would best serve the province for delivering air ambulance service. And that's what they've done," he said.

The decision to base aircraft in St. John's had more to do with the number of health professionals than the geography, Osborne said.

"We are looking at Gander and what we're able to do in Gander," he said. "But based on the the population of the Avalon region and the geographic location of of Happy Valley-Goose Bay [and] the number of health-care professionals that work in the Avalon region, the advisors had determined that those would be the ideal locations to best provide health care to and air ambulance to the province as a whole.… It is the availability of medical flight specialists, the actual health care workers."

One of the big changes to the future ambulance service, says Osborne, will be the increased role of helicopters which will help better serve areas of the province that are not receiving an adequate air or road ambulance service.

"Some of the far reaches of the province will be better served by helicopter," he said. "So we're going to have a much greater reliance on helicopter services. We're also going to have more air ambulance, a combination of fixed and rotary wing, so there will be more air ambulance available. We therefore need more medical flight specialists than what we currently have."

Back at EVAS, White — who says he's not submitting a proposal for the RFP — says an ideal fix would be the establishment of a new not-for-profit entity to run air ambulance services. 

Barring that, he's encouraging provincial leaders to be open to suggestions along the way.

"Many people in rural Newfoundland have an interest in this," he said.

"We have some amazing people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador that are some of the best in the world, and we can do anything here. So I would just encourage everyone to keep an open mind and to see if we can find what's best for the patient."

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