City Council · November 25, 2025 · Item 6.1
The following motion has been recommended by the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee: That Guelph City Council calls on the Government of Canada…
Main motion under the agenda item Ontario Big City Mayor’s Resolution on Paramedic Safety and Violence Against Paramedics - 2025-546
Carried (13 to 0)
13 in favour, 0 against — unanimous
What was voted on
The motion in its exact words, as recorded in the minutes.
The following motion has been recommended by the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee : That Guelph City Council calls on the Government of Canada to reintroduce and adopt legislation amending the Criminal Code to explicitly include paramedics and first responders under Section 423.2 protections, and increase penalties and maximum terms of imprisonment for aggravated assault against paramedics, firefighters, and other first responders to align with those for peace officers. That Guelph City Council and Wellington County Council each forward this resolution, once ratified, to The Prime Minister of Canada, The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Local Members of Parliament, the Guelph Police Services, the Ontario Provincial Police Wellington County detachment, the Ontario Big City Mayors’ Caucus, The Federation of Canadian Municipalities for advocacy and adoption as FCM policy, and The Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
How the room voted
In favour (13)
- Allt
- Billings
- Busuttil
- Caron
- Caton
- Chew
- Downer
- Gibson
- Goller
- Guthrie
- Hauser
- Klassen
- Richardson
What council was given
The staff reports and correspondence attached to this item.
What was said
322 words from the meeting recording, transcribed automatically. Times are from the start of the recording.
Read the debate(click to open)
15:04Resolution on paramedic safety and violence against paramedics. Do you mind giving me 30 seconds?
15:12Thank you. So would someone be willing to move and second it for me, okay?
15:16I'll go I'll go
15:18Quran and I'll go Richardson. Thank you
15:23So just kind of following the bouncing ball here a little bit the Ontario big city mayor's caucus
15:27we actually passed this at AMO up in our AMO meeting
15:33along with Marco, which is the the other group of mayors and
15:37When that would pass unanimously it was sort of asked if we could bring this to all of our
15:43municipalities to try to gain some speed around this issue
15:47Because it really did a revolve a lot about paramedics
15:51It was brought first to the joint social services and land ambulance committee with the county and that was where
15:58This was originally placed and it too was passed unanimously there at the committee level
16:05As you follow the bouncing ball now usually things that have anything to do with land ambulance and such can then come back to us here
16:13looking to endorse as well and
16:15Basically what it is in a nutshell is that we are asking the federal government to look to amend the criminal code to
16:22Bring in protections for first responders, especially as an example of our paramedics that are not, you know
16:28under the same sort of category as
16:30Other peace officers would be for violence against them at all
16:34And I think it does send a good statement of that advocacy work to try to do that. That's my 30 seconds
16:41I hope that was okay. Any questions?
16:44No moved and seconded. I'll follow the vote. Is anyone against that advocacy?
16:49No one thank you everybody. That's
16:52unanimous as well
16:54So now we're moving into the items for discussion because we might have a couple of not might we do have a couple of
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