Editor: Re: Delta defends plan for additional firefighter training, Oct. 1 As the flames of the 20 per cent wage increase over eight years have barely cooled, Mayor Lois Jackson is once again making decisions the rest of the province's mayors think are downright ridiculous and a waste our municipal tax dollars.
As a paramedic in Vancouver for 22 years, I think using our municipal monies to train and then to purchase and maintain the medical supplies the Corporation of Delta is proposing is the wrong approach.
I can appreciate fire Chief Dan Copeland's rationale to make the Delta Fire Department appear more useful as only six per cent of its annual responses are to fires, but it's the provincial budget that should be paying for the much-needed additional medical services in Delta (specifically South Delta).
If Jackson, Copeland and chief administrative officer George Harvie really cared about the well being of the citizens of Delta, they would be lobbying the Liberal government for more ambulances or at the very least be demanding the ambulances stationed in Ladner (that are "supposed" to service Ladner and Tsawwassen) stay in South Delta.
On a daily basis, South Delta is left with no ambulances in our community as they have been directed to medical calls in Surrey to help with their massive workload. Ambulances stationed in Vancouver, White Rock and Richmond are being dispatch to 911 calls in South Delta as the closest resource on a regular basis.
More provincial ambulances in our community will provide the adequate medical care that we all need and deserve, not wasted municipal tax dollars.
Darren Chisholm
