Haines Junction should consider paid fire chief, says report from village staff

The Village of Haines Junction in the Yukon could soon have a conversation about whether to have a paid fire chief.

Administration presented a report to council about the matter during its meeting last Wednesday. It hopes council will consider it when it undertakes strategic planning.

The report said the volunteer fire chief position has been vacant since 2022 and it does not appear anyone in the fire department wants to take the job under current conditions.

"It's a big ask of any citizen to step up and be a volunteer fire chief. They need a tremendous amount of support from the community to do that job successfully," said Dave Fairbank, the village's chief administrative officer.

The report drew from a review of fire services in the Yukon in 2021. That review found a growing need for fire services to comply with safety and regulatory requirements. At the same time, fire chiefs across the territory have expressed that they cannot take on any more administrative work.

Fire departments have a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure they can respond to emergencies, said Warren Zakus, president of the Association of Yukon Fire Chiefs.

Zakus said that includes paperwork, keeping track of criminal record checks, drivers licences and abstracts, and making sure firefighters are up to date with their training. As well, there's equipment that needs to be maintained, from personal protective equipment to rescue tools.

Fire chiefs can delegate those tasks, while some departments will outsource them.

"We try and get as much of that done by other people so that we can focus on the important things. But someone still needs to co-ordinate all of that stuff and make sure it happens and make sure it happens on time," Zakus said.

Zakus said fire chiefs have to deal with an increasing administrative workload to meet the latest safety standards.

"But to me, the most important part that I stress with all of our people is if we go to an incident, [and] our equipment doesn't work right … then that affects the outcome of the incident," he said.

Fairbank said the risk of personal liability in the event of non-compliance is a reason they're having trouble filling the volunteer fire chief position.

"You're talking about life and safety. It's paramount," he said. "The regulations are there to protect the firefighters and being really on top of that, and making sure that we're ticking all the boxes is crucial. Absolutely. It's not negotiable."

A potential solution for the village could be to create a full-time paid position, similar to ones in northern municipalities such as Watson Lake and Dawson City in the Yukon and Fort Simpson and Inuvik in the N.W.T. 

The report said these communities have a hybrid position, where the person is both the fire chief and manager of protective services, making them responsible for bylaw enforcement and emergency measures as well.

The village says a volunteer fire chief's annual honorarium costs the municipality about $3,500. However, a manager's salary would range from $88,000 to $132,000 plus benefits.

Fairbank said he doesn't know how hard the manager position would be to fill. But he said the 2021 fire services review helped him better understand what the village needs.

"A lot of people think that it's primarily about being a great incident commander and having extensive knowledge of firefighting, which of course [are] valuable assets," he said.

"But in practice, especially in a small community where there are relatively few calls, the vast majority of the work is administrative. And it requires … different skill sets than what might have made an outstanding fire chief 20 years ago."