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Originally Posted by Slava
Is the issue really a name change that we need though? Like any time there are hazardous materials involved, or water rescues or that sort of thing, flooding, and who knows what else the fire department is responsible. It's fine that they're not actually putting out fires a lot of time, but those are obviously needed services.
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It’s more than a name change, though. If we created a new service to deal with the public health and safety needs of 2021, it wouldn’t look much like the fire departments we have in how we train, equip, and fund it.
And this isn’t just a City of Calgary or Alberta government problem. It’s a problem right across North America of community needs and resources changing, but entrenched perceptions and interests being very slow to change with them.
Calgary’s finances are still in decent shape, but many municipalities and counties in North America are sliding into financial crisis owing to unsustainable costs of police and fire services which make up the lion’s share of public spending in those communities. Meanwhile, there’s a critical shortage of EMS drivers and forest fire fighters, who get paid much less than firefighters. It’s an egregious misallocation of resources and funding.
Honestly, just read the article.
It’s depressing that this kind of important issue so often devolves into appeals to emotion and the usual partisan finger-pointing. This is what our politics should be about - making tough decisions on how to allocate finite resources and deal with looming structural crisis. But we won’t even acknowledge these sorts of structural problems even when the data couldn’t possibly me more clear.