Province issues stop-work order for Nova Scotia Firefighters School

The Nova Scotia Firefighters School has been issued a stop-work order by the province, which means classes at the Waverley facility have been suspended indefinitely.

The school made the announcement on Facebook on Friday. It said the third-party safety organization it hired to conduct an audit found issues with the school's "safety paperwork."

"Unfortunately for students of our ongoing classes, this means that, in accordance with [Occupational Health and Safety] and the Department of Labour, we will be putting our classes on hold until new forms can be created and policies adjusted to reflect those changes," the school wrote in the post.

The announcement comes just days after the family of Skyler Blackie, a firefighter who died following a routine training procedure at the school in March 2019, learned he had informed his instructor the expired fire extinguisher he was using had rust on it, but was told to use it anyway.

The fire extinguisher exploded and Blackie died 11 days later in hospital. He was 28.

Following Blackie's death, a court case resulted in the school admitting in 2022 that it failed to perform routine inspections and keep adequate records.

CBC News has contacted the school's executive director, John Cunningham, but he did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

In a statement to CBC News on Friday, the Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration said Nova Scotia firefighters deserve to be trained in a safe facility.

The department said no students are currently enrolled in entry-level training courses at the school and the province is continuing to work with the facility to address safety concerns.

It said the department has been working with the school since it first requested a third-party assessment of the worksite last year.

Earlier this week, Blackie's family learned the school received 41 new safety recommendations as a result of a third-party review. Nova Scotia's Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration said 22 "high-risk activities" were noted by Occupation Health and Safety officers in July.

"When compliance was not fully achieved, we issued a stop-work order on Aug. 16 that prohibits any high-risk training activities. The stop-work order will remain in place, and the activities cannot resume, until compliance is achieved," the department said in Friday's statement.

"We have been working closely with the Blackie family since our initial workplace investigation into Skyler's death. We have been in touch with them on all our safety work including the stop-work order."

'Boiling it down to paperwork'

Blackie's sister, Jessica Gillis, told CBC News on Friday that she has mixed feelings about the situation.

"On the one hand, I'm thrilled that there's going to be no students there for the foreseeable future and knowing that there's no risk of anybody else being harmed," Gillis said.

"On the other hand, I feel like their statement is brushing over what is really going on. They're boiling it down to paperwork but to the best of my knowledge ... that paperwork includes creating policy and procedures. And policies and procedures need to be tangible things, they need to be things that can be communicated so that when a crisis does happen, they know exactly what to do."

Gillis said the decision to stop classes doesn't go far enough. She wants Cunningham to step down.

"Our fight isn't over ... I think the statement they're releasing, it still shows that they're not holding accountability for a lot of things and I think without new leadership, nothing is going to change," she said.

Blackie's family had been pushing for changes to be made at the school since his death. Blackie was from Debert, N.S., and had been a firefighter since he was 18.