On Tuesday, November 12, the Municipality of Les Cèdres signed a letter of intent with the Town of Saint-Lazare to possibly pool their respective fire safety services. What does this mean in concrete terms? Neomedia demystifies the issue with Les Cèdres mayor Bernard Daoust.

"For the moment, nothing has been officially decided. A letter of intent means that at any point in the discussion process, either party can change its mind. We are currently studying the costs of pooling our personnel, versus those we would incur to build a new fire station on the Cedars territory. As I said, the decision has not yet been made. We're just discussing this option. To do this properly, we're working with a committee of experts who are familiar with every aspect to be considered in pooling human and material resources ,” explains the chief magistrate from the outset.

These experts include Patrick Lalonde of Icarium: Leader En Gestion De L'Incendie Au Québec. "He's helped several municipalities in the province with this kind of project. He's a fire specialist. He used to be a firefighter, but he also has good expertise in merging fire departments. He knows all the facets that need to be taken into consideration, and he's the perfect person to guide us through this transition, should we decide to go ahead with this option. The final decision should be made next June ,” he adds.

The annual operating budget of the Cedars Fire Department is $850,000. "We don't have precise figures yet, but it's very expensive to build a new fire station these days, let alone acquire a fire truck. It's a minimum of $1 million, depending on the truck required. Even if we have twenty new trucks and no one to operate them, we won't get very far. We must never forget that lives are at stake ,” he says.

Many advantages to pooling resources

If the Municipality of Les Cèdres wants to go ahead with this project, that of pooling its human resources and equipment with the Town of Saint-Lazare, there will be many advantages.

"Fire station 5, located right next to the Town Hall, would be retained, and a team of two people would be stationed there at all times, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Currently, the Fire Department has 20 firefighters, but only two full-time employees who work 28 hours a week: the director and the preventionist. The other firefighters work part-time. As for the vehicles, a decision would have to be made as to which ones to keep and which not. The primary objective behind this decision would be to improve our services to the population. At the moment, the MRC's risk coverage plan requires us to respond in 8/15, i.e. to have eight men on site within 15 minutes, which is impossible. Most of our part-time firefighters have day jobs outside Les Cèdres. We could meet this standard if we merged with Saint-Lazare ,” he imagines.

At the moment, it's not unusual for the Municipalité des Cèdres to be understaffed to respond to fire or first responder calls. "We regularly call on other municipalities like Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Coteau-du-Lac/Les Coteaux and Vaudreuil-Dorion to help us out. Each time, we have to pay for these interventions. If we joined forces with Saint-Lazare, we'd reduce our mutual aid requests. We'd only use them for major interventions or those requiring a specific response, such as a water or height rescue ,” he continues.

Mergers increasingly considered

If Saint-Lazare agrees to merge the two services, it is open to hiring more resources to better serve the Cedars territory, in addition to retaining existing staff.

"These days, more and more communities in Quebec are deciding to pool their resources. Just in our neck of the woods, Coteau-du-Lac and Les Coteaux have done so, as have Pincourt and Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot and Rigaud, which serves Pointe-Fortune and Très-Saint-Rédempteur. To be completely transparent, we've been testing the waters for a possible pooling of our respective workforce with Vaudreuil-Dorion and Coteau-du-Lac as well, but Saint-Lazare really remains the best option from our point of view. We have a close working relationship with them, ” he confides.

The changing role of fire departments in recent decades may explain why more and more municipalities are opting for mergers. "In the 50s, firefighters only had to put out fires.Homes were made of materials that didn't ignite immediately. There was time to intervene, even if it took longer to get there or to get access to water.Nowadays, things catch fire very quickly. So you need to have a very good response time. Fire departments are also called upon to respond to first responder calls, civil protection and prevention operations. Their role has expanded considerably over the years. The same applies to equipment. 40 years ago, there was little concern about what they wore or what was good, or not, for their health. Today, just the opposite is true, and quite rightly so. We wouldn't want them to make themselves ill by doing their job.

In order to be fully transparent with citizens, the Municipality of Les Cèdres will be holding a citizens' meeting in December to take stock of the situation. Questions will be put to the Saint-Lazare mayor and the director of the Saint-Lazare fire department. What will happen if Ville de Saint-Lazare withdraws from the process before a potential agreement is reached? We'll have to think of a plan B,” says Daoust.

"We're there now. There are only 7,200 citizens in Les Cèdres and even fewer taxpayers. We have to take people's ability to pay into account before making decisions. We want to inform citizens in a fair and transparent way. The goal is for everyone to have the same information and for citizens to be able to ask their questions directly at the source. ”

With this in mind, Saint-Lazare and Les Cèdres invited all members of their fire departments to a special meeting on Thursday, November 14. The subject of the meeting was the merger of the two departments. How did they react? "Some of our firefighters thought they were out of a job. Before the meeting, they had seen some misinformation on Facebook that led them to believe that. We set the record straight and answered their questions. It's normal for them to have questions. We made sure to answer them as best we could ,” he concludes.

Mr. Daoust invites interested citizens of Les Cèdres and Saint-Lazare to attend the information meeting scheduled for December.The date will be announced shortly.This will be the perfect opportunity to share your opinions, questions and concerns with the people concerned.