On July 13, 2107, the Deep River Fire Chief released a damning report on the irresponsible behaviour of our “professional” firefighters, who object to wearing pagers and pressure each other not to receive training.

The Fire Chief’s report reveals that these factors, in addition to the failure of the arbitration system to provide any relief to the exorbitant costs of our ineffective fire protection service, were a few of the reasons for the Town’s decision to allow the firefighting staff to be reduced to 5, and to place them all on a single shift to facilitate supervision. Continue reading DR cuts fire protection while union fails to provide professional service →

The Arbitration result between Deep River and its fire fighters over the matter of the whether the town can implement the model that right for it, has recently been released to the public in late June, 2017. You can read the arbitrator’s full decision here.

The arbitrator ignored the democratically and strongly expressed opinion of the people of Deep River. He denied Deep River any relief, while continuing a tradition of awarding pay raises well above most other public sector workers.

My commentary published in the NRT in July 2017: Continue reading DR Fire Arbitration Result →

We’ve been told, effectively: “Deep River, you can hire all the volunteer firefighters you want, but if you do, you’ll be stuck with your expensive fire service model for the long term. You’ll have to agree to give away your power Continue reading Arbitration allows volunteer fire fighters, yet denies taxpayers right to cost‐effective fire service →