MPPs Murdoch and Arnott turn up the heat on Minister over forced resignation of Double Hatter fire chief

Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch and Waterloo-Wellington MPP Ted Arnott questioned the Minister of Community Safety Monte Kwinter about another incident where a key fire fighter on a rural fire department has been forced to resign by the fire fighters’ union. The exchange took place in the Ontario Legislature on December 9th.

This time, the Chief of the Mildmay-Carrick fire department in Mr. Murdoch’s riding has been forced by his union to resign from the volunteer department because he was a Double Hatter. In his question, Mr. Arnott challenged the Minister’s evasion of Mr. Murdoch’s question about the safety of his riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.

“Unfortunately the Minister did not answer my colleague’s question, so I guess I will. No, your riding is not safer with the loss of the Mildmay-Carrick fire chief. In fact it is less safe, because his valuable training, leadership and experience have been taken away from those communities, all because of an aggressive union’s membership drive and the unwillingness of the current Government to lift a finger to protect these rural communities,” Mr. Arnott declared in the Legislature.

“The Minister just said that the Double-Hatter issue should be resolved through collective bargaining, and yet he knows full well that this is impossible…because the rural communities which are losing the Double Hatters have no seat at the table when a city and its professional firefighters sit down to negotiate,” he continued.

166 Ontario municipalities have recently passed resolutions calling on the Liberal Government to take action to protect the right of Double Hatter fire fighters to volunteer.

“If the Government continues to look the other way while our rural departments lose their key people, those communities become less and less safe in the event of an emergency. My question is this: Is it going to take a tragedy involving the avoidable loss of human life before this Government takes action on this vital public safety issue,” Mr. Arnott asked the Minister in the Legislature.

The Minister again refused to take any appropriate action to protect Double Hatter fire fighters.

Mr. Arnott invites people to support Double Hatters by printing petitions off his website at: www.tedarnottmpp.com and suggests that signed petitions be delivered to the local MPP.