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Add paramedic operations to the list of City of Ottawa services looking for alternate sources of funding.

Anthony Di Monte, the general manager of emergency and protective services, said the city learned Tuesday that the province was freezing funding for the Ottawa Paramedic Service to 2017 levels.

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The city has already approved the 2019 paramedic budget. The additional funding added to the budget will now be the city’s responsibility. The 2018 costs requiring provincial funds could also be impacted.

The paramedic street operations, also referred to as land ambulance operations, are funded equally by the municipal government and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

The 2019 spending budget for the Ottawa Paramedic Service is about $92 million, not including the $9-million cost to run the dispatch centre, which is fully funded by the province.

Fourteen additional paramedics were included in the 2019 city budget to bolster response times, part of a multi-year program approved in 2016 to increase the number of paramedics in Ottawa. Before then, the city hadn’t added paramedics to the service in five years.