PUBLIC SAFETY OR ISLAND HEALTH FAILURES?

MORE “SAFETY” STAFF – FEWER CALLS?

What Nanaimo’s own numbers say

City council keeps selling big spending on RCMP and Fire as if demand is exploding and services are overwhelmed.

But the call data published earlier this year tells a very different story.

RCMP: CALLS FOR SERVICE ARE DOWN

2021 RCMP calls for service: 48,120
2024 RCMP calls for service: 42,743

That’s 5,377 fewer calls in 2024 than in 2021 – roughly an 11% drop in workload over just three years.

Yet over this same period, Nanaimo taxpayers have been told we must spend more and more on policing “just to keep up.”

If “safety demand” is the driver, why are total RCMP calls going down while costs keep going up?

FIRE: SLIGHTLY MORE CALLS – NOT A WAVE

Nanaimo Fire Rescue’s own figures comparing 2018 vs 2024:

Structure fires
- 2018: 161
- 2024: 172
- Difference: +11
Motor vehicle incidents
- 2018: 664
- 2024: 695
- Difference: +31
“Fire – Other”
- 2018: 546
- 2024: 567
- Difference: +21
Medical calls
- 2018: 7,507
- 2024: 7,853
- Difference: +346

Add those four categories together:

Total incidents 2018: 8,878
Total incidents 2024: 9,287
Increase: 409 calls in six years

That’s an average of only 1.1 additional calls per day city-wide.

So, between 2018 and 2024, the Nanaimo Fire Department’s workload rose by just 409 calls a year – a modest bump, not a crisis.

OVERDOSES SPIKED – THEN FELL

Overdose/poisoning calls:

2022: 1,104
2023: 1,822 – up about 65% from 2022
2024: 1,150 – down about 37% from 2023

So yes, 2023 was ugly – a big spike in overdose responses. But by 2024, overdose calls had dropped back close to 2022 levels.

In other words: the overdose spike was real, but it doesn’t justify a permanent “new normal” level of staffing all by itself.

40 MORE FIREFIGHTERS… FOR 1 MORE CALL PER DAY?

This should make taxpayers sit up:

“This council has approved the addition of 40 more firefighters during this same period of time.”

Set that beside the actual workload numbers:

Extra calls per year (2018 → 2024): 409
Extra calls per day: about 1.1
Extra firefighters approved: 40

It stretches common sense to claim that 40 new full-time firefighters are required to handle one more call per day, especially when:

Structure fires are almost flat (172 vs 161).
Motor vehicle and “fire other” are virtually flat.
Medical calls are up, but not dramatically.
Overdose calls spiked, then fell back.

Given that a single career firefighter in B.C. can easily cost well over $150,000 per year once wages, pensions, and benefits are included, 40 new positions mean:

Several million dollars in new staffing costs every single year
to cover 409 extra calls annually.

That’s thousands of dollars in extra payroll for each additional call.

WHAT TAXPAYERS SHOULD BE ASKING

No one is arguing against public safety. Police and firefighters do critical work.

But these numbers raise some unavoidable questions:

If RCMP calls are down 11%, why are policing costs still climbing?
If Fire call volume is up by only 1.1 calls per day, why did council approve 40 extra firefighters?
How much of this “safety” spending is really about politics and union pressure, not genuine workload?
And how much of Fire and CSO time is being used to backfill health and addictions failures that should be fixed by Island Health and the Province, not by property taxes?

At a minimum, Nanaimo residents deserve:

A transparent explanation of how staffing levels are set.
A clear link between call data and hiring decisions.
And honest answers about whether we’re paying for real safety, or for overbuilt staffing that doesn’t match the actual call numbers.

VOICE of NANAIMO