Wildland firefighters say bill meant to provide workplace health benefits falls short

Wildland firefighters say a new bill that lowers the bar to access benefits for work-related cancers, heart injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder needs amendments to specify how long they have to work to qualify.

Last week, Ontario passed Bill 190 to expand coverage to wildland firefighters, so that they will be afforded the same health coverage and rights as municipal firefighters.

It lowers the service time required for wildland firefighters to receive benefits for occupational diseases from 15 to 10 years, the same as traditional firefighters.

Noah Freedman is a vice-president of OPSEU, representing the crews that battle forest fires.

Freedman and fellow firefighter and investigator Mark Belanger were joined at Queen's Park by two NDP MPP's, Lise Vaugeois of Thunder Bay-Superior North, and Guy Bourguoin of Mushkegowuk-James Bay.

Freedman says while wildland firefighters are seasonal workers and spend six months of the year fighting forest fires, he's unclear that the legislation considers one season to equal one year of service to qualify for coverage, something he called a "glaring error" in the bill.

He fears they'll have to work twice as long to qualify.

"Wildland firefighters have to work over double the number of years as municipal firefighters to qualify for cancer coverage," he said.

"Even though wildland firefighters are exposed to a decade worth of carcinogenic smoke in a single busy fire season, a six month fire season only counts as a half year of service under the legislation. Therefore, in order to qualify for cancer coverage, which requires 15 years of service, a wildland firefighter would have to work for 30 fire seasons."

OPSEU presented the issue to a government at committee last month, and sought amendments to the Workplace Insurance Act, however the motions were denied with some committee members saying the WSIB will recognize each fire season as a year of service.

But Freedman remains unconvinced they'll be treated equally as other firefighters

"It would be in order to be treated fairly, not to be treated special," Freedman said in an interview.

Vaugeois is supporting the firefighters as they continue for calls to be re-classified.

"I'd like people to imagine working 16 hours a day facing forest fires, said Vaugeois. 

"You wear the same clothes for weeks on end. You can't shower. Those clothes are soaked through with carcinogens. And then you have to take a shovel in your bare hands and dig through the dirt. You can get blastomycosis, which is very, very serious fungal induced infection, something we don't necessarily think about, but these workers are exposed to this constantly and that's quite common in northwestern Ontario in the soils."