County of Brant Council discussed the base 2027 draft operating and capital Paramedic Services budget during its regular Council meeting on Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
The report which was provided by Councillor David Miller, Chair of the Brant-Brantford Paramedic Services Committee, highlighted that the committee approved a $14.09-million base operating budget for 2027, representing a 13.6 per cent increase, as well as a capital budget of $832,000.
The committee also approved the following additional budget investments:
- One Logistics Commander totaling $45,018, representing an additional 0.36 per cent increase
- One Logistics Technicians totaling $58,431, representing an additional 0.47 per cent increase
- One Logistics Technicians totaling $58,431, representing an additional 0.47 per cent increase
- Addition of an Operations Vehicle at a net cost of $2,660, representing an additional 0.02 per cent increase
In addition, staff were authorized to place refundable deposits on two replacement ambulances, included in the 2027 Paramedic Services capital budget, in the amount of $151,800 to be funded from the contingency reserve to be repaid from the Paramedic vehicle reserve upon 2027 budget adoption.
The General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services was also permitted to directly negotiate the acquisition of the two ambulances with Demers Ambulances to a maximum purchase price of $759,000.
During the meeting, Councillor Jennifer Kyle asked what was driving the 13 per cent increase in the budget.
“The 13.6 is a stand-pat budget. We’re not doing anything special. What it is, is it’s a reflection of what we’ve done in the past. So we’ve added a 12-hour ambulance as of the first week of October of this year; so that will be for the full amount for 2027. We also built a new parking garage, as you know, with Grandbridge Energy, and we have to pay the full year’s lease for 2027, but they’ll be moving into it shortly,” Miller explained. “The province tells us that they will fund Paramedic Services 50 per cent, but unfortunately, they don’t do it the first year; they do it the second year. So, 13.6 per cent is a big increase, but at the same time, it’s not anything new. It reflects decisions made in the past, and once the provincial funding kicks in, there will be a very low increase for 2028, but this is what it is.”
Councillor Kyle had also asked what the increase would be after adding in the new positions, and what Brant’s share would be, and Cindy Stevenson, Brant’s General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services, said the final total would result in a 15 per cent net levy increase with the change requests added to the budget.
Miller added that the addition of two Logistics Technicians will ultimately result in savings.
“It’ss been explained to us that there is actually some savings because they’re handling all the supplies,” he said. “They can order it better. They’ve got better control of it. So there’s actually some savings in the supplies. We don’t see it here, but we will see a little decrease in supply costs.”
Councillor John Bell then asked if the upcoming 12-hour ambulance service was due to the increase in population, and if County Council could expect to see a budget jump every two years.
“You have it half correct. It’s population growth, but it’s also an aging population because that’s the fact of life. Seniors have more ambulance trips than the rest of the population. Paramedic Services does a very good job of tracking a lot of metrics; things like how many times we go without an ambulance, code zeros, and how many times we have other paramedics services from our surrounding municipalities come into Brant or Brantford to pick up people,” he said. “They have a utilization rate for ambulances, and there’s a whole bunch of metrics they’re following. So they keep a close eye on that, and also the projected population increase and aging population. But it’s a combination of the two. Right now, we see stresses in the system around 10 p.m., and that’s why this extra ambulance is going to run from around noon till midnight.”
The report from Paramedic Services was then received as information.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
