What to know
- Winnipeg resident Ken MacKinnon waited nearly 11 hours for an ambulance after slipping on ice and fracturing his hip.
- MacKinnon ultimately required hip surgery and days of hospitalization, and is now questioning the effectiveness of the current emergency response system while calling for changes to prevent similar situations.
“Maybe you should cut me with a knife, call back 911 and say I’m bleeding now,” was what Winnipeg resident Ken MacKinnon jokingly said to his wife as he ultimately waited 11 hours for an ambulance.
MacKinnon is speaking out after the painful ordeal which started after he fell in his neighbourhood.
“There was a water main break on the street“, MacKinnon tells Now Toronto.
“The city came by and scraped the streets but they didn’t sand it after, so it was kind of like a polished ice rink.”
On the morning of Dec. 20, on his way to his car, MacKinnon slipped and landed on his hip.
“I tried to get up a couple of times, and it just didn’t work. So, I just lied there in the middle of the street,” MacKinnon recounts.
Fortunately, his neighbours saw him lying on the ground and rushed to help him into his house.
“They put me on a chair and we called 911 in hopes that we have a quick pick-up,” MacKinnon says.
MacKinnon, who lives ten minutes away from the nearest hospital, says that no pain reliever he had available at his home helped with his pain.
“I was just breathing through the pain. I think we must have called 911 back about six or seven times. Each time they said, ‘Well, our system is based on a triage system, so there’s probably people of higher priority than you right now,’” MacKinnon says.
He says the paramedics offered him a cab that would take him to the nearest emergency room which he had to decline due to his pain.
“There was no way I could have gotten into a cab. When they did pick me up, they slid a tarp underneath me in the chair and six [paramedics] picked me up and brought me to a stretcher. … I would have loved to [take a cab] if I could.”
The ‘triage system’ MacKinnon is referring to is the five-priority dispatch system that was newly implemented by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) in 2025.
The city’s first response used to follow a two-priority dispatch system, where every call was categorized as emergencies requiring responses with lights and sirens or non-life-threatening not requiring lights nor sirens.
Now, every medical call the WFP receives is screened and categorized from Priority 1 to Priority 5 – from highest to lowest acuity medical needs. With the new system, some non-urgent calls may be connected with a community paramedic instead.
WFPS says it’s meant to “allow for a more tailored response to specific types of emergencies” and to “ensure patients with the most critical, time-sensitive emergencies are getting the quickest response possible”.
MacKinnon was finally picked up by an ambulance just after 9 p.m. – almost 11 hours after his initial fall.
According to the union representing Winnipeg’s first responders, United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg (UFFW), the WFPS responds to more calls per capita than any other capital city fire department in the country. In 2024, that meant 169.3 calls per 1,000 residents.
Upon medical examination, the urgent care doctors discovered a fracture. Following further delays in scheduling his surgery, he had pins put into his hip shortly after 9 p.m. on Dec. 22. He was discharged on New Year’s Day.
“This system is not working. … I thought our ambulance system was better than our emergency room system. I thought pickups were being done quickly and that you were assessed at the hospital and triaged there, not over the phone,” MacKinnon says.
According to the union representing Winnipeg’s first responders, United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg (UFFW), the WFPS responds to more calls per capita than any other capital city fire department in the country. In 2024, that means 169.3 calls per 1,000 residents.
WFPS says it typically staffs 19 ambulances around the clock, with two crews assigned to each ambulance during the course of their 12-hour shifts. It puts an additional 11 ambulances in circulation “during the part of the day when [their] call volumes are typically the highest.”
On Dec. 20, when MacKinnon called 911, WFPS says it “experienced staffing shortages.”
“We had 16 of 19 ambulances staffed for the day shift and 14 of 19 ambulances staffed for the night shift,” a spokesperson tells Now Toronto, adding eight of the 11 additional ambulances were staffed.
For now, MacKinnon says he is still focusing on recovery. When asked whether he intends to follow up with the city regarding the matter, MacKinnon says he doesn’t know yet.
“I really don’t know what to do at this point. I would like to see some changes in the system, and I don’t know if suing the city is going to do anything,” MacKinnon says.
