1. A Canadian Chief’s Perspective
The Fire Service
A Canadian Chief’s Perspective

2. Click to add title Poplation of 36.7 million 9.9 million squared km
Share a border with the US that is over 8,800 km long
80% live in urbanized area

3. One of 13 provinces and territories
Most populated province million
Area of 1 million square kms

4. Greater Toronto Area
7, 124 square km
Population of 6.4 million people or 17% of the entire country

5. The City of Mississauga
Population of 750,000
292 sq km
Served by a staff of 713 in Fire & Emergency Services
20 stations, shared communications with Brampton Fire
Fire Suppression, Fire Prevention, Training, Mechanical, Emergency Management
Insert Map of Mississauga

6. Ontario Authority under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act
Municipal responsibilities
2 (1)  Every municipality shall,
(a) establish a program in the municipality which must include public education with respect to fire safety and certain components of fire prevention; and
(b) provide such other fire protection services as it determines may be necessary in accordance with its needs and circumstances.
Methods of providing services
(2)  In discharging its responsibilities under subsection (1), a municipality shall,
(a) appoint a community fire safety officer or a community fire safety team; or
(b) establish a fire department.
441 Fire Services in Ontario – All at the lower level or municipal level of government
32 are completely full time
214 composite
195 fully volunteer (paid on call)
EMS not part of our mandate

7. 3 lines of Defense

8. What makes us tick Driven by NFPA standards
Response standards - NFPA 1710
Professional standards- NFPA
Ontario Fire Code Regulations
Inspections and Enforcement
Municipal Gov’ts set levels of service
Est and Reg bylaws

9. Unionized Workforce 11000 full-time unionized staff
A number of volunteer departments are unionized
Exclusions
Over 11,000 fulltime staff are unionized – ie 713 staff in Mississauga but on 14 non-unionized

10. The New Paradigm Escalating Costs with a government wanting to reduce
Labour rewards escalating (1st class ff is $143,000 all in)
Fire incidents not changing and dollar losses increasing
Still no working smoke alarms in 50 % of homes
The need for a more inclusive and diverse workforce

11. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
PUBLIC SAFETY
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
BALANCE

12. Time to reset Know your risks in your community
Develop a risk mitigation plan
Think out side the box
Integrate all three lines of defense
Pub Ed, Code enforcement, Emergency Response
More emphasis on the first 2-lines
Be deliberate

13. Public Education Be targeted and aggressive
Generalize when appropriate but:
Know your risks
Develop key programs
Build tools
Use all your staff to delivery messages
Capture the data (who, what when) and compare year over year on fire data for success.

14. Code Enforcement Be proactive
Ensure that the owners and property managers know responsibilities
Into every building annually or every two years
Work with reps but don’t be afraid to order/ charge or fine
Don’t be sorry for enforcing safety requirements

15. Emergency Response Establish appropriate benchmarks for response times
How are you deploying resources?
Health and Safety is maintained
It is the third line of defense
“No pride in fighting a fire that could have been prevented”

16. Diversity Cultural shifts to attract and retain
Only 3-5% avg female in suppression
Not a recruitment issue
More focus on attraction of qualified candidates
Greater need to look at the entire cultural diversity of municipality and department

18. Mental Health Growing concern PTSD and Occupational Stress Injuries
PTSD Prevention Plan – Gov’t
Building resiliency
Right benefit at the right time
PEER Teams – grass routes
Other programming

19. End of Day Dedicated staff Focused and deliberate change
Funding issues
Strong labour unions
Time for change is now
Not one size fits all.