B.C. paramedics union pursuing mandate to serve strike notice

B.C.’s paramedics union is taking steps towards job action after last month’s breakdown in negotiations with the province.

On Thursday, Jan. 15, the Ambulance Paramedics of BC (APBC)/CUPE 873 warned via social media that a looming provincewide strike vote could “seriously cripple our already fragile healthcare system.”

“We need to return to the bargaining table – now,” said APBC, noting a disruption to paramedic services “risks serious impacts to 911 response times, patient transfers, and community coverage.”

“This is not what we want. The responsible path forward is to get back to the table and finalize a fair and equitable agreement that puts British Columbians and their healthcare needs first,” said APBC.

The province and the union have been in collective agreement negotiations since September 2025. APBC said some progress was made before talks broke down before Christmas.

“As a result, the union is now engaging its membership about potential job action, including the possibility of a strike,” said the APBC in a Dec. 30 news release.

“This is not where we expected or wanted to be,” said APBC president and lead negotiator Jason Jackson. “Paramedics and dispatchers are more essential to British Columbia’s healthcare system than ever before.

“We are deeply concerned about what will happen if government fails to take these negotiations seriously.”

At of 1:12 p.m. on Jan. 15, Ian Tait said he’d been awake for an hour.

Having worked a night shift, the advanced care paramedic and a supervisor was grabbing a bite to eat before heading to meet with fellow CUPE 783 members – wearing his APBC communications and social media director hat.

“We spent the last couple of weeks doing info sessions with our members; this week we’re doing in person meetings, to tell the members we’re going to be going to a strike vote, we want a strong yes mandate and then we’re going to serve strike notification to the government at that time,” said Tait, explaining the vote likely won’t take place until February.

“We’re still months away from implementing job action.”

Negotiations aren’t over wages, but primarily “flex money,” which Tait described as “the pot of money that helps us improve other aspects of the collective agreement like mental health supports, overtime wages, deployment…”

“The small amount that (the province) is offering doesn’t allow us to improve mental health supports, it doesn’t allow us to increase overtime expenditures,” said Tait.

“The ambulance service is run on overtime.”

Overtime pay is a key component in negotiations. The union has been pushing for double time, as opposed to the time-and-a-half paramedics currently receive per hour of overtime.

“We have a hard time getting people to work overtime, especially with the stress of our job,” said Tait. “If you want people to staff an ambulance on their days off and holidays, they should be getting paid what other healthcare people get paid to work overtime.”

At the same time, overtime work is the union’s solution to what Tait described as unsuccessful efforts BC Emergency Health Services to recruit more paramedics. He sees the cost of living in B.C. as a contributing factor.

“The cost of living here is astronomical – we’re not attracting people from other provinces or other countries…,” said Tait. “What we’ve said is you need to look within. If we an get even a small percentage of our membership to work a little bit of overtime, we can correct the staffing crisis overnight. So that’s what we think makes the most sense.

“We’re trying to help, not hinder this process. That being said. if we go to any type of job action where we restrict overtime, even a day or two, the ambulance service is going to be absolutely crumbling because how many people are working overtime now, and we’re still not staffed 100 per cent.”

Tait noted how in recent years the umbrella of “medical emergencies” paramedics respond to has grown to include mental health and drug related issues, and APBC members are finding it “harder to feel like you’re making an impact… “

“It’s very hard to go to a lot of the calls we do, with people suffering with mental health or addictions or being unhoused – it’s a completely different demographic we deal with now and we are their healthcare system,” said Tait.