WHAT A 10% RAISE LOOKS LIKE IN NANAIMO

JUST THE TEN PER CENT:

FIREFIGHTER RAISES VS. THE PEOPLE PAYING THE BILL

City Hall likes to talk in big, blurry numbers: “provincial pattern,” “fair and sustainable,” “overall financial plan.”

Let’s forget all of that for a minute and look at just one number:

10%

That’s roughly what Nanaimo’s firefighters will see in wage increases over 2025 and 2026 under the new IAFF contract – 5% one year, 4.5% the next.

Forget the whole paycheque. Let’s just talk about that 10% slice and compare it to the incomes of the people footing the bill.

What “10%” looks like in the fire hall

According to the City’s 2024 Statement of Financial Information (SOFI), Nanaimo had:

106 IAFF members (firefighters, lieutenants, captains, fire prevention) each earning over $75,000
Total IAFF remuneration of about $14.17 million in 2024

That works out to an average firefighter pay in the neighbourhood of $135,000 a year (wages, overtime and taxable benefits, not counting pensions).

The SOFI also shows a handful of firefighters at the very top end earning around $230,000 in 2024.

So what does 10% look like in dollar terms?

10% of a top-end firefighter wage (~$230,000)
→ about $23,000
10% of the average IAFF wage (~$135,000)
→ about $13,500

That’s just the raise, not the whole salary.

Now let’s walk that 10% out of the fire hall and into the homes that are paying for it.

10% vs. a typical Nanaimo household

The City’s own economic report estimates that in 2023:

The median household income in Nanaimo was about $81,600
Per-person income was about $42,000

How does that compare?

A 10% raise for the highest-paid firefighter (~$23,000) is roughly 28% of a typical Nanaimo household’s entire income for the year.
A 10% raise on the average firefighter wage (~$13,500) is about 16% of a household’s yearly income.

In simpler terms:

For many Nanaimo families, just one firefighter’s 10% raise is equal to two or three months of their entire household income.

And remember: this isn’t their whole paycheque – it’s just the extra on top of an already high base.

10% vs. a low-income senior on OAS and GIS

Now look at the other end of the scale: the seniors we keep hearing are “protected” in this financial plan.

A low-income single senior on full Old Age Security (OAS) plus the maximum Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) is in the ballpark of $22,000 a year in total.

Compare that to our 10% slices:

10% of a top firefighter wage (~$23,000)
→ more than a full year’s income for a poor senior on OAS + max GIS
10% of the average firefighter wage (~$13,500)
→ around 60% of that senior’s entire yearly income

So when council signs a deal that boosts the top firefighter wages by roughly 10%, they are effectively granting a one-year raise worth more than an entire year’s income for the poorest seniors in town.

You don’t have to hate firefighters to find that comparison a little hard to swallow.

10% vs. what the rest of us get

City Hall calls the IAFF deal “fair and sustainable.” Maybe it feels that way around the bargaining table.

But for it to be truly sustainable in the real world, something else has to be true:

Your own income has to be going up at roughly the same pace.

If a firefighter’s pay is jumping about 10% over two years, and then sitting at that higher level forever, what does your situation look like?

Is your boss giving you 5% raises year after year?
Is your pension indexed that generously?
Is your small business pulling in 5% more after expenses every year?

For most people in Nanaimo, the answer is no.

Most households are stretching paycheques that haven’t grown 10% in two years to cover:

Mortgage or rent
Food
Heat and hydro
Gas or bus passes
Property taxes that rise again every spring

Meanwhile, just the 10% top-up on IAFF wages alone is roughly equal to about one per cent of the entire property tax base, permanently built into your bill from now on.

The question that matters

This isn’t about whether fire protection is essential. Of course it is.

It’s not even really about whether firefighters “deserve” good pay. Every union will argue its members do.

The real question is much simpler:

Is it fair – or sustainable – to grant 10% wage jumps at the top of the city payroll, when the people paying the bill aren’t seeing anything close to that in their own incomes?

When 10% of one person’s wage is a full year’s income for a low-income senior, or a quarter of a normal family’s livelihood, maybe the problem isn’t that taxpayers “don’t understand the provincial pattern.”

Maybe the problem is that the pattern itself has lost touch with the people who are funding it.

We can argue endlessly about spreadsheets and bargaining mandates. But if City Hall wants to use words like “fair” and “sustainable,” they should be prepared to answer one very simple, human question:

Fair and sustainable for whom?

VOICE of NANAIMO