
As we started to see the financial picture unfold we immediately started to communicate with the Minister, Deputy Minister, MHA’s and officials from FES to ensure we were being a proactive and not a reactive association. I can honestly say this has been a huge undertaking with each director speaking with various members of government at every opportunity to ensure our concerns heard while also listening to information that was coming from government.
One position government has been very clear on is that they are going to be evidence based decision makers and they will be taking a very close look at where they invest public money to ensure the most value is realized. As an association that has been taking every opportunity to make its self more efficient and effective, we welcome this approach.
We are very confident that our work to ensure we have an efficient operation, our willingness to partner with folks to deliver programs, our open honest line of communication with government and our ability to display that we are not sitting on our hands and just waiting for grants to be handed to us will serve us well.
Thursday will be a difficult day, let there be no doubt about that, but your association has been actively voicing your concerns and addressing the issues affecting the fire service today while at the same time showing government that we are doing everything in our power to keep our house in order to be a productive partner and not just a dependent.
As the budget unfolds we will post updates on our social media outlets to keep you as informed as we possibly can and when we have had an opportunity to fully review and understand what the budget details actually spell out for us we will be posting it here for you to review.
President, Duane Antle