More funding needed to improve response times: firefighters union

The Halifax Professional Fire Fighters (HPFF) union says more funding is needed to help improve response times across the entire municipality.

The union says in 2024, Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency (HRFE) only reached its own response target 54.5 per cent of the time.

“Response time targets are critical to ensure we have enough resources, that’s firefighters on fire trucks, on scene quickly to perform search, rescue and fire suppression,” Joe Triff, vice-president of HPFF, told CityNews. “Every second that passes without intervention allows a fire to grow and spread, increasing the risk to the public and to the responding firefighters.”

In 2018, Halifax Regional Council adopted the current standard of 14 firefighters in 11 minutes. That standard is already below the international best practice set out in NFPA 1710.

It sets the standard for urban firefighting, but Triff said Halifax has been struggling to keep up since it amalgamated in 1996, which moved urban resources out to rural and suburban communities.

“The urban response capabilities that Dartmouth and Halifax had up to the mid-1990s have been spread to rural and suburban communities since amalgamation, which has improved fire response in those areas; however, our urban core hasn’t seen the investment required to keep pace with the growth,” he said. “In order to meet our response targets, we need more firefighters on fire trucks.”

The HPFF says they need four firefighters on each frontline apparatus.

HRFE staffs 51 stations serving 419,000 residents in a 5,577 km² area.

Triff said the fire budget from the municipality has grown in recent years, but it is not enough to keep up with the increasing demand.

In 2025, the region increased its fire budget to $97.9 million, a 5.2 per cent increase over 2024.