Five Argenteuil municipalities are considering changes to how fire protection services are provided.
Gore, Lachute, Mille-Isles, Saint-André-d’Argenteuil, and Wentworth have jointly announced that they are working together to identify potential solutions to significantly improve fire service coverage in their areas. The five municipalities are currently working to share the city of Lachute’s resources for an enhanced firefighting headquarters and an internal fire department with the other four municipalities, through a service provision agreement.
This initiative is part of a shared desire to ensure greater protection for residents, businesses, and industries, while controlling costs in the medium and long term.
Faced with growing challenges related to workforce availability, the complexity of operations, and evolving regulatory requirements, the five municipalities undertook an analysis to assess the benefits of collaborative management and the sharing of an internal fire department. This approach is based on more effectively ensuring the firefighting force meets the requirements of the fire safety risk coverage plan; ensuring increased availability of staff and centralized internal fire department personnel with firefighters leaving the central fire station in less than 90 seconds; Equitably distributing costs among the participating municipalities; Reducing the major investments required to maintain autonomous services, particularly in terms of vehicles; Controlling cost increases in the medium and long term.
Each municipality will retain its fire stations, equipment, and staff. The goal is to pool certain strategic functions to strengthen operational efficiency and ensure the presence of a minimum number of firefighters day and night. A support mandate has been awarded to Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton to assist decision-makers with this project.
The project is part of a major trend observed across Québec to adapt to new legal obligations and significant cost increases. The shared objective is to officially position the next steps for 2026 and beyond.
