I’d like to take a moment to address the growing challenge of “level zero”—sometimes “code black”—here in Ontario. This is the complete absence of ambulances available to respond to 911 calls.

In 2021, Ottawa paramedics spent more than 49,000 hours in offload delay at area hospitals. This resulted in 750 incidents of level zero. The 90th percentile hospital offload delay was 97 minutes, which far exceeds the 30-minute benchmark. This means that paramedics are waiting for over an hour and a half to transfer their patients to hospital—two paramedics and an ambulance stuck at the hospital because the hospital is too backlogged to take them.

In the first seven months of 2022, the Ottawa Paramedic Service experienced more than 1,125 instances of level zero. In some cases, Ottawa had 11 consecutive level zero hours—11 hours of consecutive level zero, Madam Speaker—and some low-acuity patients waiting seven hours before being transported to hospital.

Level zero isn’t just a problem in Ottawa, of course. It’s happening right across the province. The province and municipalities pay for paramedics to be assisting residents needing urgent medical attention. They do not pay them to wait at the hospital to offload their patients. It’s imperative that the government provides the funding necessary to municipalities, in particular the monies requested by the city of Ottawa, to hire the paramedics needed to end level zero events and better serve our friends and neighbours.