The Fire Alarm is Ringing in Sharon and East Gwillimbury:
Our Fire Services Must Catch Up to Growth Before Another Tragedy or Disaster! 

Public Safety Should Be Paramount - Delivering Real Emergency Readiness for East Gwillimbury is a Must, Not an Option

Dear Neighbours,

East Gwillimbury is all about family, neighbours, and friends. Our public safety should never be compromised in East Gwillimbury.

Before you read the rest of this post, I urge you to take a moment to watch the CBC News report.

It covers the heartbreaking Good Friday 2013 house fire in Sharon that claimed the lives of four members of the Dunsmuir family. Following this unimaginable tragedy, the effectiveness of our fire service delivery was brought into stark focus when it was revealed that it took volunteer firefighters over 12 minutes to reach the family’s home. At the time, our Fire Chief stated that the response time could have been decreased significantly if the town had full-time firefighters.

The outcome could have been entirely different if a fully equipped, full-time crew had arrived within the standard six minutes. This profound loss should have been the ultimate lesson for our town, but it was not enough. Less than a year later, flames gutted the Mount Albert fire hall in February 2014. The fire station was completely destroyed, including equipment and six vehicles parked inside—among which was a year-old fire truck worth around $700,000. It took about 30 minutes for firefighters from surrounding communities to arrive.

Unfortunately, over a decade later, we are still fighting to get our leadership to prioritize and expedite the essential emergency infrastructure and community safety we so desperately need.

Our safety must be paramount for all of East Gwillimbury. As a professional engineer, public safety is the foundational principle of my profession, and it must be the absolute priority of our municipal government. Serving the public interest means ensuring that when any family dials 911, the resources arrive without delay. Given our devastating history, East Gwillimbury should boast one of the best-equipped, most proactive fire services in Ontario. Instead, our firefighters are still fighting just to secure the bare minimum standards of safety.

The East Gwillimbury Professional Fire Fighters Association (IAFF Local 4985) published a series of critical statements outlining the reality of our emergency response capabilities. I hear their demands for a dedicated fire hall, critical equipment, and proper staffing loud and clear. I deeply appreciate their professionalism and transparency in informing our residents about the barriers they face in fulfilling their commitment to save our lives and protect our assets. Our population has almost doubled, but we still have three fire stations that are not fully staffed and still rely on Paid-On-Call firefighters. Our equipment and trucks have not been modernized. I encourage you to read the East Gwillimbury Professional Fire Fighters Association statements for yourself.

This is not just a union issue; it is a documented municipal reality. The Town’s own 2022 Fire Master Plan Update acknowledges that East Gwillimbury is one of the fastest-growing communities in Canada. Yet, the report confirms our area of highest call volume is still primarily staffed by paid-on-call firefighters. The official NFPA 1710 standard requires the first career fire engine to arrive on scene within 4 minutes. But the Town's data shows our 90th percentile response times are stretching past 13 minutes across the board—and over 16 minutes for Mount Albert. We cannot keep relying on a rural, paid-on-call response model to protect an exploding urban population.

We are in this precarious position today because, for at least the past 16 years, our council has failed to listen to the experts and refused to prioritize our safety. A town is not just endless housing developments and subdivisions—there is much more to building a community than just building houses. Rapid growth must be matched with the critical infrastructure necessary to protect it.

My Commitment to Sharon, Queensville and East Gwillimbury Safety as Your Ward 2 Councillor

Ensuring prompt response times can mean the difference between life and death, making established standards like NFPA 1710 critical for guiding full-time career fire departments in resource allocation, staffing, and operational efficiency.

As your Ward 2 Councillor, a fire hall for Sharon is an absolute must. While our community should be deeply concerned today, I am actively working to ensure the next town leadership finally delivers the dedicated Sharon fire services, fully equipped and with full-time staff, that our residents have rightfully deserved for over two decades.

I will immediately call for a comprehensive emergency and fire service study (Fire Master Plan) for East Gwillimbury. We must establish a precise, data-driven roadmap of what our fire service must look like—analyzing staffing, equipment, and the long-term sustainability of our fire halls—based on our current conditions and our projected 2051 population.

The goal is clear: supporting our fire department in resource allocation, staffing, and operational efficiency to ensure prompt response times that mean the difference between life and death, with a minimum impact on taxpayers.

The reality is that after decades of stopping short on implementing necessary improvements to our fire services, the bill has come due. Eventually, we must pay to correct this infrastructure deficit—but we must achieve this vital capacity with the absolute minimum impact on your municipal tax bill. I will champion a rigorous, multi-tiered approach:

• Aid Agreements: Conduct a full review of our mutual aid agreements with our surrounding fire service departments, and explore and enter into automatic aid agreements with them to support opportunities for service and cost-related efficiencies.

• Hold Developers Accountable: Growth must fund growth. Developers driving our population expansion must fund the capital costs of the safety infrastructure their developments necessitate, such as a fire hall and fire trucks. Existing taxpayers must not subsidize developer impacts; utilizing municipal tax resources will be an absolute last resort. For context under the NFPA 1710 standard, a single-family residence requires an initial deployment of at least 15 firefighters, while high-rise buildings demand a minimum of 43 firefighters.

• Pursue Upper-Tier Funding: We must aggressively pursue and secure federal and provincial government funding dedicated to public safety, emergency response, and infrastructure expansion, like provincial funding for the joint fire services assessment for the Towns of Georgina and East Gwillimbury.

• Expand Shared Services with Neighbours: Support joint fire services assessments between East Gwillimbury and Georgina, and/or Central York Fire Services (Newmarket & Aurora). We do not have to look far to see what works: CYFS reached over 75% of their calls in under 6 minutes and 20 seconds in 2024. Shared service options include fleet maintenance, automatic aid, special teams, training, and group purchasing. I will push to expand these operational partnerships with Georgina and explore similar service-sharing options with Central York Fire Services.

• Advocate for a Unified York Region Fire Service: Currently, York Region is fragmented into eight separate local fire departments. I will work collaboratively with our next Mayor to bring this initiative again to the Regional Council and work with forward-thinking municipalities to aggressively advocate for a unified fire service provided by York Region—mirroring the highly efficient, regional models already in place for York Regional Police and York Region Paramedic Services.
  
  

If the status quo has not prioritized your safety in past decades, and today they are doing the math to show how much your tax bill will increase because of their delay, your response should be clear: enough is enough.

When it comes to our families, neighbours, and friends in East Gwillimbury, safety cannot be an afterthought—it must be a guarantee.
Action matters: Share this post with your neighbours and join the conversation about bringing transparent and accountable representation to Town Hall.

On October 26, voters have the opportunity to set a new standard for council transparency and accountability.

In East Gwillimbury, you elect two ward councillors. Make Shahab Aryan your choice for independent, engineered leadership on Council.

Explore my platform and detailed proposals at www.ShahabAryan.ca, or contact me directly at Shahab@ShahabAryan.ca.

Shahab Aryan, P.Eng.

Independent Ward 2 Candidate