TORONTO — The recent death of a firefighting student during an ice-rescue exercise run by a private training company has prompted Canadian government officials to call for more industry oversight.
CBC News reported that privately run firefighter and rescue training companies fall in a regulatory loophole. The Ministry of Labour doesn’t have regulatory oversight because those undergoing training are not the employees of the companies providing the training, said Oshawa MPP Jennifer French.
“Firefighters keep us safe, give us peace of mind and risk their lives in the service of others,” French said. “In return, it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that they are not unnecessarily put at risk.”
“If this industry is going to continue, and these private trainings are going to continue being on offer, then they have to be standardized, they have to be regulated,” she said.
Students trust that instructors have the necessary qualifications to teach high-risk skills and that the proper equipment will be used, but currently have no guarantees, according to the report.
This month’s training death in Hanover, Ont., wasn’t the first such incident but it must be the last, she said.
Adam Brunt died during an ice-rescue exercise run by a private company on Feb. 8. The course is not mandatory to become a firefighter, but Brunt’s father said the 30-year-old signed up in the hopes it would help him get a career job.
The training exercise was run by a Toronto-area company called Herschel Rescue Training Systems. The company’s owner, a Toronto-area firefighter, was acquitted after being charged in 2010 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in the death of a volunteer firefighter, Gary Kendall, who died during a similar exercise.
A judge ruled he had not officially been designated as incident commander for the exercise. Officials would not say whether the same man was involved in both incidents, but several industry insiders confirmed that was the case, according to the report.
The investigation is ongoing.