Why I Voted to Raise Taxes for 40 New Firefighters — and Would Do It Again
Updated: 3 days ago
Climate change, prolonged droughts, and decades of poor forestry practices have combined to put Canadian communities at greater risk of wildfire than ever before. We've all watched the footage from West Kelowna and Summerland, where wildland urban interface fires tore through neighbourhoods in a matter of hours. On Vancouver Island, the Mt. Underwood Fire, the Cameron Lake fire and the Wesley Ridge fire have demonstrated that fire behaviour is changing on the island and bringing the threat of wildfire closer to home. The question for local governments isn't whether this risk is real, it's whether we're prepared for it.
When I was elected to Nanaimo City Council in 2022, one of the first things I did was dig into the state of our Fire Department. What I found was sobering: Nanaimo Fire Rescue didn't have enough firefighters to respond to more than one major structural fire at a time, let alone take on a large-scale wildland urban interface fire. I read the city's 2022 Fire Department Master Plan cover to cover, and it was clear the department's staffing hadn't kept pace with the city itself.
Consider the numbers. The last major hiring push at Nanaimo Fire Rescue happened back in 2008 and 2010, when 20 firefighters were added to staff the newly built Fire Station #4. Since then, the City of Nanaimo's population has grown significantly from roughly 83,000 in 2011 to an estimated 113,864 in 2026 an increase of over 37%. At the same time many more large apartment buildings have been constructed bringing their own fire-safety demands. Our firefighting capacity simply hadn't grown to match our city.
Nanaimo Fire Rescue has mutual aid agreements with the surrounding fire departments. But unlike Victoria which is surrounded by municipalities such as Esquimalt, Saanich and Oak Bay with professional fire departments, Nanaimo calls on volunteer fire departments from small rural detachments. This still makes it challenging for fighting more than one large structural fire in the city at the same time or if the city needs to battle a large wildland-urban-interface fire. For example the Harmac hog fuel fire in 2024 took Harmac’s on-site fire department, 11 fire apparatuses from Nanaimo Fire Rescue, B.C. Wildfire Service and volunteer fire departments form Cranberry, North Cedar, East Wellington and Lantzville to battle the fire, which spread to an old dump site and threatened a large forested area. Now imagine that this was just one fire threatening our community.
So in 2023 and again in 2025, I voted to raise taxes to hire and equip 40 new firefighters, 20 in each year, along with two new fire trucks. I have no problem raising taxes to fund this kind of public safety investment. I'd rather defend that vote at election time than defend inaction if a wildland urban interface fire ever reached our community while council sat on a master plan it chose to ignore. Public safety comes first.
What Is a Wildland Urban Interface Fire, Exactly?
A wildland urban interface (WUI) fire is a wildfire that burns where human development such as homes, buildings, infrastructure, meets or mixes with flammable wildland vegetation like forests, brush, and grasslands. These fires don't just burn trees; they burn "built fuels" too, like houses, fences, and vehicles, alongside the natural vegetation around them.
The BC Wildfire Service fights wildfires in the forests and Nanaimo Fire Rescue fights structural fires and brush fires in the City. This distinction matters because it determines who responds. If someone tosses a cigarette butt along the parkway and sparks a bush fire, it's Nanaimo Fire Rescue that shows up, the BC Wildfire Service would simply take too long to arrive. But when a forest fire pushes into city limits, the roles split: Nanaimo Fire Rescue handles the structural firefighting, while BC Wildfire Service takes on the forest fire itself. Both agencies bring different training and equipment to the job, and coordination between them is essential to protecting the community.
Moving Forward
If re-elected to City Council, I'll keep doing what got us here: reading the reports, following the evidence, and voting in the best interests of our community's safety, even when that means difficult conversations about taxes. Underfunding our Fire Department isn't a cost we avoid; it's a risk we defer, and defer at our peril.
On October 17th, vote for Paul Manly.
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