The Council received a report on the closure of the Gravenhurst Campus for Fire-fighter training.
McLaren said that the college would still be offering some online courses for firefighters, and learning contracts to allow the Township to host courses.
He said that they had moved to “regional training centres”, with CNL attempting to open one locally, which they were ‘struggling with’.
He said he didn’t know the requirements for setup.
“So we will have to play the game to make sure that we have enough compliant firefighters?” Mayor Moore said.
“It’s just a matter of time for the mandated fire training is required for everyone.” McLaren said. “And we’re working towards that.”
“We can train our basic firefighter levels a lot of inhouse work. It’s going to be courses for our captains and officers, that we’re going to miss the firefighters colleges.”
He said that the costs will be mostly for mileage and housing.
“Awful kind of them.” The mayor said.
Councillor Mackay asked why they they were closing the College.
“They’ve been pushing these regional training centers for some time now.” McLaren said. “It was never cost effective for them; 65 dollars for them. It was great for us, and if those fees had gone up over the years, they could have kept it.”
“It was a surprise to a lot of us but also not a surprise.” he said. “The writing has been on the wall for a long time.”
Councillor Nicholson said that it would require a “substantial increase in budget” to ship away firefighters for training, which McLaren said they would never afford.
“We have to do it on-site.” he said. “A training facility is mandatory. You can only do so much searching in a fire hall, you can’t spray water around that would destroy everything. We’re not necessarily training as would act on-scene. We definitely need to have some space that’s incrementally built upon based on our needs.”
Councillor Nicholson asked if they could amend the motion to pursue a separate facility.
The mayor said it would have to be a written motion, and they would likely need to ‘buddy up’ with another Township.
CAO Robert Trembley said that they need to “keep it on the back-burner” to combine it with other initiatives.
The motion was carried.
