By Don Rennick, North Bay.
It’s bad enough that taxpayers are being held ransom by firefighters demanding higher and higher compensation but to have Councillor Bain describe the settlement as a good faith negotiation is ridiculous.
The six-year contract (which expires next year by the way) just agreed to gives firefighters a 10% increase which is unsupportable from any reasonable point of view. The average fire department wage and benefit package per person will be $157,000 per year in 2019. North Bay’s population has decreased by 2,000 persons over the last five years. Inflation in Ontario since 2015 is 6.6%. The number of fires in North Bay since 2015 has not increased.
Firefighters like to refer to their job as a profession. This is a misnomer. Firefighting is a job, pure and simple.
In order for an occupation to qualify as a profession, it must be governed by a regulating body, generally, one recognized by the government, which is responsible for establishing the educational requirements and qualifications necessary to enter the profession. The profession must be self-regulating with the power to discipline or suspend members for failure to follow the standards established by their particular associations. In addition, associations hold individuals responsible for their actions in the performance of their jobs and they can be punished for mistakes made.
Firefighters associations, like police associations, are labour unions by another name. Unlike nurses, lawyers, accountants, and doctors who are subject to disbarment or loss of licence to practice for failing to do their jobs, firefighters associations are primarily concerned with supporting individual members rather than the profession itself. According to an article in the Globe and Mail, in Windsor in 2015, the union grieved a decision to pull a fire truck out of service in 2008, saying that the administration had promised to leave it in service until the new contract was settled. The arbitrator sided with the union and told the city to cough up $381,000 in theoretically lost overtime – $1,328 for each member of the fire department. Does this sound like a group of professionals?
In addition to attempting to promote their public image by describing themselves as professionals, union members typically point to the dangers involved in their jobs as support for the never-ending increases in their compensation packages.
In 2010 according to the Fallen Firefighters Association, the number of firefighters who have died in Canada in the line of duty since 1848 surpassed 1,000 names or 6.2 deaths per year. A firefighter would not qualify on a top twenty-five list of dangerous jobs. If deaths on the job were a factor, we should be paying loggers, fishermen, steel workers, roofers, garbage collectors, and construction workers a lot more than firefighters. The kicker is that 50% of these 1,000 firefighter deaths were not fire related but attributable to heart attack or trauma including 30% who had a history of heart problems. In 2012, there were more than 500 applicants for 20 firefighting jobs in the Ontario communities of Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo, jobs at that time, paying just under $100 grand per year. Not bad for what is essentially a part-time job.
Part of the admiration by the public for firefighters is the perception that they are heroes defending the lives and property of others with little regard for their own safety. A hero is a person who walks down the street, sees smoke coming from a building, rushes in and rescues a mother and two children along with the family pet.
A fireman who shows up in a $500,000 vehicle loaded with the latest firefighting equipment wearing $4,000 of gear and pours water on a burning building while standing on the sidewalk is just doing what he was paid to do. Of course, critics can point to catastrophes where firefighters have lost their lives performing heroically, with 9/11 coming to mind. But those firefighters, especially in North Bay who use this fact to support being paid in excess of $150,000 per year, are insulting the memories of those who lost their lives in that tragedy.
The annual sunshine list is evidence enough of this travesty and it’s time we stopped asking taxpayers to support indecent wage levels for fire protection services based on misplaced adoration and public relations.
Councillor Bain could have spent the years since 2015 attempting to have the arbitration system changed to take into account taxpayers’ ability to pay and the differences between fire fighting in North Bay compared to Toronto or Windsor rather than making empty statements. Or better still, bring a motion before council to inaugurate a volunteer fire department. During the last five years, the total property loss in North Bay due to fires was approximately $3.5 million per year. The 2019 fire department budget is almost $14 million. Theoretically, taxpayers could self-insure every fire in North Bay for 25% of what they are paying to operate the fire department.
D. D. Rennick CPA, CA
North Bay
