Overtime soars, Winnipeg fire trucks sit empty, & Council ignores the risks

Winnipeggers are paying some of the highest property tax increases in recent history. You see it on your bill, you feel it in your mortgage payments, and you have been told it is necessary to keep the city running. Yet when your house catches fire or a loved one suffers cardiac arrest, you are left waiting longer than in any other major Canadian city for help to arrive. That is not speculation. It is a fact.

I had a long conversation with Knick Kasper, President of the United Firefighters of Winnipeg, who laid out the reality in plain numbers. Between August 11 and 17 of this year, 197 positions were filled by overtime at a cost of $262,555. Even with that spending, trucks were still taken out of service because not enough staff could be found. Minimum staffing is 167 firefighters per shift, yet Winnipeg regularly starts 10, 20, or even 30 short. That means fewer trucks are on the road when you need them.

That single week in August cost taxpayers $262,555 in overtime. At that rate, the annual bill is over $13 million. Last year, Winnipeg spent more than $10 million on firefighter overtime alone, enough to hire 70 full-time firefighters fully compensated. Instead, the city chose to pay a premium for fewer people, while response times fell further behind.

Across Canada, the industry standard for response time is four minutes or less for the first fire suppression apparatus to arrive. Winnipeg’s standard is the same. But we are not close. In 2021 the city’s average response time was 8 minutes and 20 seconds. That is nearly double the standard. The national median was in the mid-six-minute range. Winnipeg was last in the country. That was before call volumes climbed even higher. Fires are up 84 percent since then, vacant building fires are up 245 percent, medical calls are up, and the population has grown. Yet Winnipeg has fewer fire trucks than it did last year. The result is obvious. Longer response times and greater property loss.

Kasper said that every second counts when a fire starts. Fires double in size every 30 to 60 seconds. A victim’s chance of survival in a cardiac arrest drops 10 percent every minute without intervention. Citizens are not just inconvenienced by these delays, they are endangered by them.

City Hall has known this for years, Kasper told me, and he is right. The City’s own audit department warned as far back as 2009 that the fire service was understaffed and that the city would spend more on overtime premiums than on regular staffing. The recommendation was a staffing ratio of 1.34. Winnipeg has sat at 1.28 for decades. The result is chronic overtime. Year after year, the budget is blown. Year after year Council pretends to be surprised. They tuck the shortfall into reserves, borrow more, or quietly shift funds, but the pattern never changes. The money already exists. It is spent every year. The issue is not revenue. The issue is allocation.

Instead of hiring permanent firefighters, the city wastes millions on overtime while pushing staff to exhaustion. Some firefighters work more than 100 extra shifts a year. Some are leaving the service altogether, something unheard of in Winnipeg until recently. In 2024, WFPS employees lost 17,600 hours to psychological injury. Firefighters accounted for only 16% of that total. Burnout is no longer a hypothetical risk, it is measurable, and it is growing.

The provincial government has played a small part. Manitoba provided $3.4 million for 24 additional firefighters, the first increase in decades. That brought the ratio from 1.28 to 1.29. In real terms, it is barely a dent. Kasper estimates Winnipeg needs at least 59 more positions just to fill existing trucks, never mind expanding to meet demand. City Hall points to the province and says health care is a provincial responsibility. That is only half true. Winnipeg operates a blended model where firefighters also respond to medical calls, a system that has worked in the past, and that system has its own issues. But the city’s core responsibility under provincial law remains fire suppression. That is squarely on the Council’s desk. Blaming the province may score political points, but it does nothing to put a fire truck in your neighbourhood when you need it.

Kasper told me the absurdity is that Winnipeg had more firefighters on duty and more fire trucks in service in 1975 than we do in 2025. The city has grown by 40 percent since then. Call volumes have surpassed projections for 2040, sixteen years ahead of schedule. Yet apparatus have been pulled from service. In early 2025, the Scott Gillingham administration eliminated three of the busiest trucks in North America, each handling about 7,000 calls a year. They shuffled resources downtown and added a ladder truck, but at the cost of losing a four-person engine company. The city effectively reduced capacity in a system already at the breaking point.

This is not just about response times. Insurance rates are tied to fire protection standards. When Winnipeg performs at the bottom nationally, insurers take note. Property owners pay more to cover higher risk. The financial cost of underfunding the fire service extends far beyond the city’s payroll.

When fire trucks arrive nine minutes after a call instead of four, homes are lost, neighbours’ homes are threatened, and lives that could have been saved are not. Firefighters stand outside watching structures burn because it is too late to enter safely. This is not the fault of the men and women on the ground. They continue to show up, working gruelling overtime shifts, sacrificing their mental health, and in some cases, their lives. The failure is political. Council has the data, the audits, and the warnings, yet they continue to budget as though the problem does not exist.

Any business executive understands this. It is more cost-effective to hire permanent staff than to lose millions on overtime. Winnipeg spent enough in 2024 to cover 70 firefighter positions, according to Kasper. Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me. We hear the same things every year—many times when Gillingham was Finance Chair for Brian Bowman—and now again. The issues often stem from snow removal being over budget or police and fire overtime, causing budget overruns, as these are easy explanations. This Council hopes you won’t complain if it’s snow removal or your safety. We hear that no member of council has significant business experience, and it shows.

Kasper and his members are not asking for endless new funding. They are asking the Council to stop wasting the money it already spends. Hire the firefighters. Fill the trucks. Protect the citizens.

When you pay higher taxes, you should expect core services to improve, not decline.

Winnipeg’s fire service is a clear example of government mismanagement. Council has known the issues for decades but chose not to act. Instead, they passed the costs onto taxpayers, firefighters, and victims of preventable delays. It is straightforward. If the city can spend $10 to $13 million annually on overtime, it can afford to hire more firefighters.

If City Hall continues to ignore the evidence, every preventable death, every burned-out home, every inflated insurance bill belongs to them. This is not the fault of the men and women working themselves into exhaustion. It is the direct result of a Council that has gambled with public safety for too long.

Winnipeggers deserve better than political excuses. They deserve protection that meets national standards. They deserve leaders who take their duty of care seriously. Until Council accepts that responsibility, every call to 911 is a roll of the dice. And City Hall is holding the dice.