Police, fire, ambulance services across Canada hit by staff shortages due to COVID-19

Emergency services in many major Canadian cities are facing staffing shortages due to a surge in COVID-19 cases across the country, with police, ambulance and fire all scrambling to redeploy and bolster their ranks.

The highly transmissible Omicron variant is already forcing small and large business across Canada to close their doors as infected or potentially infected employees are forced into isolation. But absenteeism is also becoming an issue for some emergency services.

For example, many police services across the country are reporting higher levels of their front-line officers away because of illness or isolation caused by COVID-19.

"There's a lot of concern and it is having an impact," said Tom Stamatakis, national president of the Canadian Police Association.

Not all cities are impacted. The Vancouver Police Department said Wednesday it doesn't have any current concerns with staffing levels. 

But in Winnipeg, the city's police chief announced on Wednesday that he was declaring a "state of emergency" for the Winnipeg Police Service as it now faces "some real challenges ahead."

"The current COVID-19 situation has significantly impacted our staffing resources," Chief Danny Smyth said in a statement.

Of the roughly 1,900 police service employees, there are currently 90 active COVID-19 cases with 170 personnel on COVID-19-related leave, he said. The state of emergency declaration allows him more leeway in redeployment of officers to shore up the ranks of general patrol. 

Other cities are also facing shortages among their police staff. In Edmonton, about eight per cent of police services staff are away because of COVID-19.

And in Calgary, the city's police service currently has the highest number of coronavirus infections among employees since the start of the pandemic, according to Susan Henry, chief of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA).

"To minimize disruption to emergency services, Calgary police have started to redeploy officers from other areas of the organization to support the front-line workers who are already stretched thin prior to this wave of COVID-19," she said during a Wednesday morning news conference.

This will impact other services that are provided by Calgary police, including proactive community policing, youth intervention and support services, as well as the increased length of investigation for some offences, she said.

However, Stamatakis of the Canadian Police Association said that so far, despite the police staffing shortages, he hasn't yet heard of massive cases of infection that have affected deployment.

"I think the way it's affecting deployment at the moment has been managed either through redeploying resources or having people come in on overtime," he said.