So, it’s official: Tantramar is looking for a new chief to head Sackville Fire & Rescue.

The ad posted on the town’s website last week indicated the job would pay between $73,860 and $98,480.

It also said the new chief would report to Dan Dupuis, the newly appointed director of protective services.

Dupuis’ duties include overseeing all three of Tantramar’s fire departments as well as Becky Goodwin, the newly appointed Tantramar fire service manager of people & culture, the town’s bylaw officer and whoever is in charge of animal control.

The volunteers, who actually fight the fires, were represented on the job posting in light blue boxes at the bottom of the fire service hierarchy.

Dupuis and Goodwin are full-time employees and the new chief will be as well while the firefighters themselves will officially remain light-blue-box, honorary-pay-earning, volunteers.

Sharp decline in volunteers

How long this can continue is anyone’s guess, especially these days with the prospect of fighting more frequent fires in the era of climate change. That combined with the requirement for hundreds of hours of advanced, professional training and a commitment to be on-call 24/7 are discouraging factors for potential recruits.

The steady decline in volunteers for Sackville Fire & Rescue may have been due to how successive mayors, CAOs and many councillors ignored the documented evidence of favouritism, bullying and sexism some firefighters endured.

But, it may also be partly due to the physical dangers and health risks of an especially demanding job.

In 2022, the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs appealed to the federal government on behalf of the dwindling numbers of volunteers for a more generous firefighter income tax credit. The Association’s brief sounded the alarm about the chronic shortage of volunteers who made up 85% of all firefighters in Canada:

“CTV’s W5 began its 57th Investigative reporting season last week with “Under Fire: Fewer firefighters mean slower response times, jeopardizing lives”. The story was heartbreaking, and to some shocking. However, the shortage of volunteer firefighters is not news to us. Our data show a drop from 126,000 in 2016 to 100,000 in 2021. About 32% of volunteer firefighters are over the age of 50 with over 15,000 vacancies. Our numbers are shrinking. All hazard response needs are increasing.”

To read more about the chronic shortage of volunteers and the Association’s successful campaign for more generous income tax breaks, click here.

To read previous Warktimes coverage about the shortage of volunteers that includes local participation in the CTV W5 program, click here.

New approach for Tantramar?

Since municipal amalgamation in 2023, Tantramar’s three volunteer fire departments have remained separate units that work together as needed.

Now that a new director of protective services has been hired to oversee all three, it may be time to ask this question:

How can Tantramar turn three volunteer departments into a professionally managed municipal fire service while preserving volunteers as an essential part of its operations in three separate locations?

Some municipalities have partially answered that question by hiring full-time career firefighters backed up by many more volunteers.

The newly amalgmated town of St. Stephen has a blend of full-time career firefighters backed up by volunteers in its “composite” fire dept. Photo: Facebook

The town of St. Stephen, for example, has a composite fire department that consists of six career firefighters and about 24 volunteers.

“The six career firefighters include the Chief, four driver dispatchers, and one firefighter,” says a note on its fire department webpage.

“Four of our career firefighters also act as volunteer firefighters on their days off…Each night, two volunteer firefighters sleep in the station, allowing for a rapid response during the overnight hours.”

Note: (1) After the province forced the amalgamation of St. Stephen and seven surrounding local service districts in 2023, members of the Oak Bay fire department resigned in protest because of what they saw as poor communication and a “hostile takeover.” The incident shows the importance of respecting geography, local traditions and history as Tantramar does by maintaining its three separate units.

(2) The newly amalgamated town of St. Stephen says it has 8,100 residents while Tantramar has about 10,255. Tantramar has a far larger area to cover, hence the need for three fire stations.

(3) Property tax rates are higher in St. Stephen’s downtown area at $1.5561 per $100 of assessment while the rates in Sackville and Dorchester are $1.5350. At the same time however, St. Stephen’s municipal rates are lower in its rural areas: $0.5597 vs. Tantramar’s municipal rates of $0.7411 (former Dorchester LSD); $0.8552 (Pointe de Bute) and $0.6625 (former Sackville LSD).

Other municipalities

Amherst is another example of composite fire service that combines full-time and casual staff with a large number of volunteers. Photo: Amherst Firefighters Association

Woodstock and Riverview are examples of other New Brunswick municipalities that combine career firefighters with volunteers.

Woodstock has five permanent dispatcher/pump operators plus 26 volunteers, while Riverview employs a chief, two deputy chiefs, four captain/paramedics, four lieutenant/paramedics, one training officer, 16 firefighters/paramedics and an administrative assistant supported by 28 volunteers.

Oromocto with a population of about 9,045 residents also has a composite fire department with three chief officers, 16 full-time firefighters, four part-time firefighters and 30 volunteers.

A note on its website says: “The Oromocto Fire Department is staffed 24 hours a day by a minimum of four career firefighters. The career firefighters work a trail, 24-hour rotation in a four platoon system and respond to all calls. If additional resources are required, the volunteer firefighters are paged-out and respond on the trucks that are needed.”

In Amherst, the fire department has eight full-time staff, five casual staff and more than 50 volunteers to serve a population of about 9,400 residents.

Detailed study needed

Tantramar Town Council could commission an independent study of response times over a five-year period before deciding how many, if any, career firefighters to hire.

The study would examine response data for each of the three departments including when calls occurred, how long before equipment was deployed, how many qualified firefighters responded, when they arrived on the scene, and how those figures varied by hour, weekday/weekend and station.

Council could also adopt explicit targets on how quickly an initial crew should arrive in Sackville/Dorchester versus more remote rural areas and how many firefighters should be assembled within 10, 15 or 20 minutes.

Tantramar has already begun professionalizing its fire service from the top. The question council may soon have to confront is whether that should stop with the people who manage the service — or extend to some of those who actually answer the calls.