The United Counties of Prescott and Russell are pulling their paramedics from responding to neighbouring communities, including Ottawa.
As of June 4, Prescott-Russell will not respond to emergencies in neighbouring communities when they are already outside their own municipality. Paramedics also will not be responding to any non-emergencies.
"By law we are obligated to respond to other municipalities when we are in our municipality," said Marc-Andre Periard, the Deputy Chief of Operations for Prescott-Russell.
"Once we are done with a call in another municipality, we've instructed our crews to be out of service and return here."
The township says they have been trying for years to work with the province on a solution but have yet to see results.
"Obviously things haven't changed," said Periard.
"The reason we are here today is we haven't been able to reach our response time standards."
Periard says needs in their own community aren't being met because their ambulances are constantly being drawn to Ottawa.
"We had zero ambulances within the united counties of Prescott-Russell, while calls were being done in Ottawa,"
"It increases our response time within our municipality because we have 2000 square kilometres, if we have less vehicles to cover our area, they're going to be travelling more distance."
Officials with Prescott-Russell say after seeking legal advice, there is a loophole that allows them to refuse the calls when they're outside their own municipality.
"They informed us that what we're doing is within the boundary of the law," said Periard.
"There's nothing in the law that says we can't do what we're doing."
CTV reached out to the City of Ottawa for comment, but was deferred to the province.
