An Association for Wildland Firefighters
Mission : The Ontario Professional Association of Wildland Firefighters is a non-partisan, non-profit employee association formed by Wildland Firefighters for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, working conditions and other beneficial changes through legislative/political processes, and is dedicated to educating and securing support for the organization and its members.
It’s that time of year again. Many of you are back in school, out west, or just hanging out. It can be tough to find something to do with your time after fire season comes to an end. The offseason can feel longer and be more challenging for some of you as well.
Many of you are grappling with whether you should return next year and whether or not it’s worth your time. We aren’t here to tell you that you should come back next year because honestly, it’s getting harder to justify that argument every year. If we had the answers to that question, we wouldn’t be here starting an association.
However, what my colleagues and I are trying to do is make the argument to return stronger. We want to push for change to make a career in wildland firefighting in Ontario worth your while.
Our vision for this Association is to create a space where firerangers across the province can meet to discuss change and push it forward with a unified voice. This can be done through online platforms like Zoom or Teams, email, our website, and social media. Being separated across the province has made fighting for change seem like an insurmountable task and we will be looking for representatives from each base over the coming months to serve as a point of contact for the association.
Some of the goals we would like to achieve as a fledgling organization.
· To create an organization that isn’t tied to one person and will be able to be picked up and ran with by the next generation of rangers. This should be something built to last.
· Share experiences. Whether fire line or administrative. We want to learn and share what works and what doesn’t.
· Grow the organization to reach as many rangers as possible. Create a network across the province.
Looking forward, we will focus on these main goals.
Improvements to the amount and method of compensation. Both direct monetary and beneficiary.
Work to promote the creation of offseason opportunities on top of longer baseline contracts.
Reclassify all AFFES positions involved with Wildland Firefighting to reflect our roles as emergency responders.
Work to improve both Fireranger and OPSEU participation / involvement.
There are other changes we would like to see, however we feel this is a good place to start. If there are other changes Rangers would like to see we are excited to hear from you. But we need your support to make these changes happen. We need to grow the support before we can start pushing for change. A unified voice will make all the difference.