Whereas there is an increasing need for fire departments to attend traffic incidents; And whereas this is unfairly increasing the tax load on rural residents; And whereas continued downloading on volunteer fire departments is adding to the potential failure of these small departments as taxation costs are starting to overtake house insurance benefits: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to require ICBC to compensate fire departments for first responder attendance at traffic incidents at a per call out rate plus use of expendablesconsumables.
Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness We are fortunate in British Columbia to have dedicated and skilled emergency responders who support public safety by responding to incidents on our highways. This work is important and Ministry staff are undertaking work on this issue, with three immediate areas of focus: 1. Establishing a committee comprised of road rescue service providers with internal and external partners to work with government for road rescue response. This committee is intended to be a forum to guide the work of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness EMCR and provide a voice to road rescue service providers across BC. 2. Policy development and support with immediate attention to address the rate coverage previously provided under the Inter-Agency Agreement, refresh for the Road and Medical Rescue policy suite, and policy development to better address non-road rescue out of jurisdiction fire rescue. 3. Advice and support to EMCR operations staff and road rescue service providers throughout British Columbia. Future work includes developing relationships with other provincial ministries that have relationships with local government fire services for out of jurisdiction work, such as BC Emergency Health Services for First Responder response and BC Wildfire Service for wildfire response.