Need more financing to improve response times: firefighters Union

The Need for Increased Financing to Improve Fire Response Times in Halifax
The Halifax Professional Fire Fighters (HPFF) Union is advocating for more funding to enhance response times throughout the municipality.
According to the trade union, Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency (HRFE) only met its response goal 54.5 percent of the time in 2024.
“Response time goals are critical to ensuring that we have adequate resources, such as firefighters on fire trucks, arriving quickly on the scene to conduct search, rescue, and fire suppression operations,” said Joe Triff, vice-president of HPFF, in an interview with CityNews. “Every second counts in firefighting, as fires can rapidly escalate and pose greater risks to both the public and responding firefighters.”
Back in 2018, Halifax Regional Council adopted a standard of 14 firefighters arriving within 11 minutes, aligning with the international best practice outlined in NFPA 1710.
However, Triff highlighted that Halifax has struggled to meet this standard since the 1996 merger, which resulted in urban resources being reallocated to rural and suburban areas.
“The urban response capabilities that Dartmouth and Halifax once had in the mid-nineties have been decentralized to rural and suburban communities post-merger, improving fire response in those regions but neglecting our urban core,” he explained. “To meet our response goals, we require additional firefighters on our fire trucks.”
The HPFF is advocating for four firefighters to be stationed on every frontline apparatus to enhance emergency response.
HRFE operates 51 stations serving a population of 419,000 across an area of 5,577 km2.
Triff noted that while the fire department’s budget has seen growth in recent years, it has not kept pace with the increasing demand for services.
In 2025, the region increased its fire budget to $97.9 million, marking a 5.2 percent rise from the previous year.