We have to plan fire and emergency services at the same time we plan growth, rather than trying to catch up afterward.

I am already committed to immediately adding four full-time professional firefighter positions. My intention is that those firefighters also be qualified or trained as paramedics, developed in cooperation with the Province, Island EMS and the Fire Chief so that the clinical, licensing, dispatch and patient-transfer arrangements are properly established.

That provides additional guaranteed personnel on duty while preserving and strengthening the volunteer complement.
Beyond staffing, we need the third station, appropriate apparatus, adequate water and hydrant capacity, and a much stronger approach to emergency readiness.

Charlottetown also contains risks that are different from an ordinary residential fire, including major petroleum, propane and utility fuel-storage facilities. Our equipment, training and emergency planning have to reflect the risks that actually exist in the city.

I would fund a dedicated industrial flammable-liquid fire suppression capability for those higher-risk areas, with the Fire Chief determining the appropriate equipment, suppression agent, staffing and deployment model.

Absolutely.

If we can forecast where people, housing and commercial development will be located five or ten years from now, we should be able to forecast the emergency-service requirements that come with them.

I would want a five- and ten-year model covering population and housing growth, call volumes, response times, simultaneous calls, station coverage, apparatus, water supply, career staffing, volunteer availability, relief requirements, retirements and recruitment.

I would also add a geographic risk inventory. A neighbourhood of houses, a high-rise building, a petroleum terminal, a propane storage facility and a large industrial development do not create identical emergency-response requirements.

Planning needs to recognize those differences.

I do not believe municipal-service capacity should be separated from development approvals.

I was recently in a meeting with the entire council of a smaller Island municipality concerning a proposed development that would add a number of rental units. The Fire Chief was sitting at the table with us. He understood the proposal and was able to give immediate, positive feedback about the municipality’s ability to provide fire protection for the development.

I thought that was a very good example of integrated municipal planning.

I recognize that Charlottetown processes far more development applications and it may not be practical for the Fire Chief personally to attend every planning meeting. But the principle is the important part: someone with responsibility and expertise in emergency response should be part of the process whenever a development could materially affect emergency-service requirements.

There are structures, locations and development situations where potential difficulties in emergency access, firefighting, evacuation or service capacity can reasonably be foreseen. I do not always see evidence that those questi ons are being brought to the forefront of Charlottetown’s planning process.

When the City considers significant additional density, taller buildings, large subdivisions, commercial projects or industrial development, Council should understand the resulting demands on fire protection and emergency response before making its decision.

For major developments and significant planning changes, I would require a municipal-services capacity assessment that includes fire and emergency services.

That does not mean elected officials tell the Fire Chief how to deploy firefighters. It means Council needs professional advice about the service implications before it makes land-use decisions.

We should not approve growth first and discover the emergency-service consequences later.

We have to stop looking at staffing one annual budget at a time.

I have already committed to adding four professional firefighter positions immediately. That is a first step, not a claim that four additional positions represent Charlottetown’s final staffing requirement.

The new Fire Chief should then bring Council a multi-year workforce plan showing the desired operational model, existing staffing, relief requirements, expected retirements, recruitment and training timelines, volunteer availability, projected calls and the annual hiring required to reach the required level.

We have also discussed developing additional firefighter-paramedic capacity so that medical response can be provided without stripping away the core fire response. The precise model and number should be professionally designed.

If the long-term requirement is substantially greater than four additional firefighters, I would rather know that now and begin an orderly hiring program than discover the problem years from now.

I expect that five years from now Charlottetown will have a larger professional firefighting workforce than it has today. The exact number should follow the Fire Chief’s operational recommendations, call volumes, response data and the requirements of the three-station system rather than a number selected by Council in advance.

My starting point (again) is:

Professional firefighters give us speed. Volunteer firefighters give us capacity.

Professional firefighters provide a guaranteed immediate response because they are already on duty. Volunteers provide enormous additional depth when an incident grows, when there are simultaneous emergencies or when a major event requires many more people.

Those roles complement one another.

I want to strengthen the professional complement without displacing volunteers. In fact, I would like to substantially grow the volunteer side as well. Within five years, I would like to see Charlottetown working toward a volunteer complement of at least 120 members, assuming the Fire Chief believes that is an appropriate and manageable complement.

Recruitment cannot begin only when we need another trained firefighter.

When I lived in Germany, I became familiar with the Jugendfeuerwehr, or youth fire brigade. We attended a few of their events. In Germany these youth organizations are connected to the volunteer fire service and provide young people with age-appropriate training, teamwork and a pathway toward eventual active service.

I would like Charlottetown to explore a Junior Firefighter or Youth Fire Brigade program of its own. The ages, training activities, supervision and safety rules should be designed by the Fire Department and appropriate provincial authorities, but I think there is considerable value in introducing young people to the fire service long before we are asking them to become adult volunteers or professionals.

That is not only recruitment. It is community involvement, practical education and succession planning for a volunteer service we want to remain strong twenty years from now.

The City should also continuously measure turnout, response times, simultaneous-call frequency, volunteer availability by time of day, recruitment, retention, training requirements and the demands being placed on both groups.

If the evidence demonstrates that we need additional guaranteed 24-hour staffing, Council should fund it.

The Fire Chief’s job is to give Council professional operational advice. Council’s job is to listen to it, understand the evidence, ask questions and provide the resources necessary to deliver the service.

I would expect the Chief to identify the problem, the risk created by it, the proposed solution, alternatives, costs and the consequences of delaying action.

But I also believe we should improve the governance structure through which those conversations take place.

Charlottetown currently deals with police, fire and emergency management largely through the normal standing-committee structure of Council. I would like to move toward a Public Safety and Emergency Services Commission, subject to the requirements of provincial legislation.

Its mandate would bring together the strategic oversight of policing, professional and volunteer fire services, emergency management and municipal public-safety functions.

I would envisage a structure that includes elected representation but also independent members with appropriate public-safety, emergency-management or governance experience. The Police Chief, Fire Chief and emergency-management leadership would participate directly in its work, with appropriate representation of the volunteer fire service as well.

The Commission would deal with matters such as long-term staffing, budgets, major capital requirements, facilities, equipment, communications, emergency preparedness, interoperability, performance measures and lessons learned from major incidents.

What it would not do is interfere in police investigations, tell police officers how to conduct an operation, or tell the Fire Chief how to command a fire scene. Professional operational authority has to remain with the appropriate chief and incident commander.

The principle is straightforward: integrated oversight and planning, professional operational command.

That would also give Council a much better forum for considering a request from the Fire Chief in the context of the entire public-safety system instead of looking at each department as an isolated budget line.

Financial constraints are real, but a recognized public-safety requirement does not disappear because it is inconvenient to a budget.

If something cannot reasonably be completed in one year, Council should establish a funded multi-year plan rather than repeatedly postponing it.

This is very valid considering we just put close to $40 million into Simmons and the new sports field there plus there is talk of spending $55 million or more to dress up the Eastlink Centre. We need to get our priorities straight. I would start with risk.

What can happen? How likely is it? How serious are the consequences? What is our present capability? What does the Fire Chief recommend?

What happens if we do nothing?

There is also a question of who should pay for specialized risks.

Charlottetown has facilities involving bulk petroleum, propane and other large fuel-storage risks that can require specialized municipal equipment, training and preparedness beyond that required for an ordinary property.

I would develop a lawful, risk-based fire-protection fee for facilities that create extraordinary specialized response requirements, or seek provincial authority if additional legislative authority is required.

That revenue should be dedicated to the specialized training, equipment, response capability, and mitigation required by those risks.

This is not about penalizing industry. It is about matching exceptional risk with the exceptional municipal resources required to prepare for it.

It should be taken seriously as independent professional evidence and considered together with the Fire Chief’s advice and the City’s operational data. It should have been made public starting twenty years ago, and there should have been public meetings to build support for its recommendations.

Council should not commission professional assessments and then quietly disregard recommendations it finds inconvenient.

Where an assessment identifies deficiencies or future requirements, Council should either develop a plan to address them or publicly explain, based on professional evidence, why it has chosen another approach.

I would also expect reports of this kind to be considered by the Public Safety and Emergency Services Commission so that recommendations affecting staffing, stations, water supply, emergency management or other services are considered together rather than in isolation.

Yes. I have long called out for this to be released. I would release the c ompleted report publicly, subject only to any specific material that the City is legally required to withhold for legitimate security or privacy reasons.

Residents are paying for the service and will ultimately pay for improvements to it. They should be able to see the professional assessment on which those decisions are based.

I would ask:

“What emergency, or combination of emergencies, could overwhelm us today, and what do you need to change that?”

That gets beyond simply counting firefighters or trucks.

It addresses staffing, simultaneous calls, industrial incidents, severe weather, communications, apparatus, mutual aid and the City’s overall emergency readiness.

I would want to put the same basic question to the Police Chief and our emergency-management professionals, and then get those people around the same table.

A hurricane, major fire, hazardous-material incident or other disaster does not respect the organizational chart at City Hall. Our preparedness cannot operate in silos either.

I want us planning for the difficult day, not simply the average day.

I would look at this in two stages.

Within five years, I would expect the third station to be operating, a larger professional firefighting complement to have been developed according to the Fire Chief's staffing plan, and our immediate firefighter-paramedic initiative to have matured into whatever medical-response model proves operationally appropriate.

On the volunteer side, I would like us working toward at least 120 trained volunteers and to have established a Junior Firefighter or Youth Fire Brigade program that creates a continuing pathway into volunteer service.

I would also expect the department to have the specialized equipment and training required for the industrial risks within Charlottetown, including major flammable-liquid incidents.

And I would expect the Public Safety and Emergency Services Commission to be established and functioning as the place where fire, policing, emergency management and municipal public-safety planning come together at the governance level.

Within ten years, I can see the next generation of Charlottetown’s fire infrastructure beginning to take shape.

Station 1 will eventually require renewal. Rather than waiting until that becomes an urgent capital problem, I would want the City planning well in advance for its renovation, replacement or redevelopment based on the Fire Chief’s assessment of what the downtown and surrounding area will require at that time.

I can also foresee a satellite emergency-response facility in another strategically useful part of the city. That does not necessarily mean another conventional fully staffed fire station. It could provide a location for pre-positioning specialized apparatus, reserve equipment, emergency supplies or other assets so everything does not have to originate from one of the principal stations when a major event occurs.

The location, equipment and operational model should follow the City’s growth, risk mapping and the Fire Chief’s professional advice.

By then I want Charlottetown to have a mature system in which our principal stations, professional firefighters, much larger volunteer complement, specialized industrial capability and strategically pre-positioned equipment all work together.

Fire protection should be part of a much broader emergency-readiness system.

That means regular all-hazards exercises, planning for hurricanes and prolonged utility failures, coordinated work with provincial agencies and neighbouring municipalities, protected communications and fuel supplies, and trained municipal employees who can perform support functions such as traffic control, debris clearance and other emergency duties.

During my first term, I would want the third station moving forward, four additional firefighter-paramedics added immediately, the Fire Underwriters Survey made public, an adopted multi-year staffing plan, volunteer recruitment expanded, a youth-firefighter program under development, specialized industrial-risk capability funded, a comprehensive emergency-readiness program in operation, and the new Public Safety and Emergency Services Commission established.

Immediately add four full-time professional firefighter-paramedics.

That is the single most important immediate action, but it certainly would n ot be the only one.

In fiscal 2027/2028 alone, I would also release the Fire Underwriters Survey, hold a public town hall on emergency services, fund the new industrial fire-suppression capability, get the Public Safety and Emergency Services Commission up and running, begin developing the youth firefighter program, and start implementing the longer-term staffing and emergency-readiness plans.

Adding those four professional positions is something Council can do right now, no waiting.

It increases the guaranteed personnel available immediately when the alarm comes in, adds medical-response capability, strengthens the professional core of the department and does so without replacing the volunteers who give Charlottetown the additional capacity needed when an emergency becomes larger.

I am going to repeat myself one more time:

Professional firefighters give us speed.

Volunteer firefighters give us capacity.

Charlottetown needs both.