Actually no, that's not entirely true. Fire trucks have certain lifesaving equipment that ambulances don't. Also most fire personnel have the same training has EMS workers. If they get called to assist someone who is over 400 lbs, you're going to need all the man power there is to lift the person out of the house or down the stairs as there is only two medics to an ambulance.
Gabe, as a Paramedic, I feel inclined to give you some facts, as your understanding of the services TFS and TEMS provide are a little off.
In your previous post you mentioned firefighters are trained as EMTs, this is false. In fact, Canada does not even have an ''EMT'' designation. Firefighters have 2 weeks of ''medical training'', akin to a lifeguard. Essentially they can do CPR, can assist in basic delivery of a baby, and they can give oxygen.
A paramedic has minimum 2 years of intensive training in the class room, as well as about 8 months training with paramedics on ambulances.
To see what a Paramedic can do you can read here:
http://www.ontarioparamedic.ca/paramedics/
When you're having a heart attack or a stroke, or any other number of medical emergencies you want a paramedic, not a firefighter.
Firefighters used to be sent to most ambulance calls as a way to ''stop the clock'' until an ambulance arrived. The belief was that because there are so many of them, and they are usually in their station, they would get there first. Unfortunately, statistics showed that ambulances arrived first to these calls around 70% of the time.
More important however, stats also showed that firefighters were ''ineffective'' on up to 98% of medical calls they were sent on. As a result, Sunnybrook, which runs Toronto's pre-hospital care program, removed firefighter first response from a number of types of calls.
The only ones they were left on are one's where they were found to be able to provide a critical intervention in > 1% of cases.
Merging of the two services has time and time again been proven to be completely impractical, uneconomical, and most importantly provides no positive impact to patients.
For some reading if you like,
Here is the summary of the independent study by POMAX advising against a merger and advocating for an increase in Paramedics and ambulances on the road.
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-59902.pdf
Here is the study that led to the reduction in fire-fighter response to medical calls.
https://www.msdsb.net/images/EMS/re...around medical tiered response in ontario.pdf