Escalating violence hurts paramedic mental health, retention, care: chief
Escalating violence hurts paramedic mental health, retention, care: chief
https://globalnews.ca/news/11871772/paramedics-canada-report-violence/
Publish Date: 2026-05-29 06:00:00
Paramedics in communities across Canada are trained for high-stress situations, often performing life-saving care. But when dealing with these high-stakes scenarios, paramedics are increasingly putting their own lives at risk.
In March, a Windsor, Ont., paramedic was threatened with a gun while attending to a call for service in the city’s west end, according to police.
Situations like this are becoming all the more common, said James Jovanovic, president of CUPE 2974, the union representing paramedics in Windsor-Essex.
“Over the last several years, we certainly noticed that the increasing trend – as the mental health crisis is getting worse and substance abuse cases are worse, particularly in the Windsor area – is violent actions and outbursts towards first responders.”
Paramedics in the region recorded 35 incidents involving verbal threats, 19 incidents of intimidation, 22 physical assaults and one sexual assault in 2025, a spokesperson for Essex-Windsor EMS told Global News.
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And Windsor isn’t the only community where first responders are facing these issues.
“There’s specific drug concerns that we’ve seen in certain regions that we know are linked to an increased risk of violence and erratic behaviour,” Ryan Sneath, president of the Paramedic Chiefs of Canada, told Global News. “That is one linkage to it. There are certainly other factors involved that will likely need to be studied.”
Between April 13 and 17, two Ottawa paramedics were assaulted and a third was threatened with a firearm in three separate instances. In each case, Ottawa police laid charges.
Rates of violence have skyrocketed in the Niagara Region, with the union representing paramedics there reporting a 386 per cent increase over the past 12 years.
Ninety-three per cent of paramedics who responded to a 2025 survey from the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union said they had experienced…
