Law limiting firefighters’ work not a concern here, Belleville department says

Steve Helm (left) and Jordan Haggerty are probationary firefighters based at Belleville Station 1. Under a provincial law, the full-time firefighters at the station are not allowed to work part-time in neighbouring Quinte West, but they can do part-time work for smaller volunteer departments like Madoc’s.  Photo by Rachel Stark, QNet News

By Rachel Stark

BELLEVILLE – A recent controversy over full-time professional firefighters in Ontario not being allowed to also work part-time is not a concern in Belleville, according to the crew at Belleville Fire Department Station No. 1.

There has been a decade-long fight by full-time firefighters to be allowed to also work as so-called volunteer, or part-time, firefighters. Volunteers are usually people whose full-time job is something other than firefighting but who are trained to put out fires, and are paid either an hourly rate or an annual honorarium for going to fire calls and training sessions.

This month, four firefighters in the Greater Toronto Area were accused of working part-time.

According to the Fire Protection and Prevention Act, full-time Ontario firefighters are not allowed to work part-time with another full-time fire department under the same union. Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador are the two provinces where this ban is in place.

The crew at Belleville Fire Department Station No. 1 follows this rule by not working in the Quinte West area, since it already has a full-time station. However, the firefighters are still allowed to work in smaller communities that only have a volunteer station, such as Madoc.

According to Capt. Brad Begbie of the Belleville Fire Department, the International Association of Fire Fighters applies this rule to make sure there are always enough people available in a fire department when a call comes in. If too many full-time firefighters were working part-time, there might not be enough to help in their own department if there was a call, he explained.

Firefighters who are opposed to the rule say there are many fast-growing places with only part-time fire departments that can’t provide the needed coverage.

But Begbie said that in the Belleville area, there are enough part-time firefighters.

“There always seems to be an abundance of them that volunteer, because that’s their stepping-stone to get to a full-time position,” he said.

The Belleville Fire Department is made up of two full-time and three part-time stations.

Although there are firefighters in Ontario wanting an end to the rule, Begbie said he thinks that could have a negative impact on part-timers.

“It could take up spots for part-time firefighters to eventually move up to full-time, which wouldn’t be much of a positive thing,” he said.