For Municipalities

Our hope at the outset of such an undertaking is that our process will support to make the fire service in the province of Ontario a leader in identifying the best suited and qualified job applicants, irrespective of their background and economics, as well as a leader in elevating the profile of fire services as a profession amongst the youth of our province. This will ensure a strong pipeline of strong job applicants for years to come!

What we are presenting is a conscious effort to move the fire service profession forward in a way that is manageable, defensible and works in the best interest of our profession.We believe, once municipal fire services have seen the factors that facilitated our need to change the current processes, that you too will support the move toward a uniform, standardized, province-wide candidate selection service. The Ontario Police Service adopted this standardized approach many years ago and it has proven to be very successful.

The OFAI is committed to ensuring our entry-level firefighter process identifies the best qualified candidates.Our intent is to enhance and build on past success in a manner that is proactive, where we can manage the selection of candidates into our professions ahead of any legislated compliance. We want to ensure that we have a defensible process in place, so that no matter who is selected into a role, we are able to defend our selection decisions. We also consider this process to be a win/win approach from a diversity perspective. What do we mean by that? Well, if a diversity candidate joins the profession and turns out to be under qualified for the role, the fact that such a person fails in the role sets a negative precedent for subsequent candidates from similar backgrounds who might be a great fit for the role. Hence the need to put a uniform, standardized province-wide selection process in place where we can get it right the first time!