Municipal fire services in Ontario are getting a $5-million boost to help address the impacts of COVID-19.
Parry Sound Fire Chief Dave Thompson told MyParrySoundNow the funding is provided in two streams.
One to enhance training opportunities in fire departments and the other to enhance virtual-community fire inspections.
According to Thompson Fire Departments can either pick a stream or make a combination of both in their applications which are due this Friday, March 19th.
He said the applications simply have to outline the projects and municipalities would need to have the projects completed by August.
The province said the one-time funding will include an initial $4,500 base grant plus additional funding dependent on the population; Parry Sound will be getting $6100, says Thompson.
However, Thompson said Fire Departments were not expecting this funding, adding that his department is sort of scrambling to get its proposal ready by Friday.
He said the application is not too complicated, but each department will have to quickly figure out how to maximize the impact of these funds on the community.
Parry Sound’s looking at putting in a combined application says Thompson, “We’re hoping to enhance our ability to do a virtual or Remote open burning inspection so that we don’t have to have people coming into the fire hall anymore to get applications and then have the fire prevention officer going out to take a look at inspections,”
“We’re also hoping to enhance our ability to provide online training to our firefighters. We’ve been doing that a fair bit in the past year and there are some positive aspects to it so we might carry on with some aspect of that moving into the future if we can enhance our abilities to do it,” said Thompson.
As for our neighbour, the Municipality of McDougal’s Fire Chief Brian LeDuc told MyParrySoundNow his department would qualify for $5,200 and will be applying for the funding stream under the training section.
He also shared the same sentiment as Parry Sound’s Fire Chief adding that this process does feel rushed.
“This isn’t a normal process, grants are not very often allowed for Fire Services. We’re one of the Municipal Departments that that very seldom ever have grant money available to them.” LeDuc said.