The owner of Fewer’s Ambulance Service says recruitment and retention remains one of the key issues facing his ambulance service.

Bob Fewer says the problem, like most areas of the health care sector, is recruitment and retention, and right now he needs 40 PCPs to make up a full contingent.

Until two years ago Fewer’s had between 25 and 40 employees from Ontario, but over that time, those PCPs have gone back to that province.

“We’ll be short and our schools can’t produce them,” says Fewer. There aren’t enough PCPs out there he says.

He welcomes the new legislation but admits, it will take a long time to get over some of the bad blood created during the strike.

PC leadership candidate, Tony Wakeham is calling the Essential Ambulance Services Act for striking rural ambulance workers a “bandaid for a broken ambulance system.”

Wakeham says the real, long-term solution is a single, provincial, modern and integrated ambulance system, as recommended in the Health Accord.

He says the time for implementing such a system is long-past, and he calls the strike the inevitable consequence of government’s refusal to take action on successive reports reflecting the best advise of frontline health care professionals.