North Glengarry, Ont. signs agreement with Ottawa Fire Services for specialized rescue services

Ottawa firefighters help rescue a man who fell into a hole on a worksite on Heron Road on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025. The Township of North Glengarry, Ont. has entered into a three-year agreement to have the Ottawa Fire Services provide similar services upon request. (Jean Lalonde/Ottawa Fire Services)

The Township of North Glengarry, to the east of Ottawa, has entered into an automatic aid agreement to have Ottawa firefighters respond to rescue calls requiring technical assistance outside the scope of the volunteer North Glengarry Fire Department.

The agreement was approved unanimously by the municipal council in May. It would cover requests for assistance for such needs as technical rope rescues, confined space rescues, trench rescues, grain bin and silo rescues, machinery rescues, and water and ice rescues.

According to a staff report, North Glengarry Fire Chief Matthew Roy says these types of highly technical rescue skills are not practical for the municipality to maintain.

“Specialized rescue incidents are generally low frequency but high-risk emergencies requiring specialized personnel, advanced rescue systems, and dedicated apparatus to safely mitigate hazards and rescue victims,” the report says.

“As a volunteer fire department, North Glengarry does not maintain an internal technical rescue team, nor the specialized rescue equipment and certification program required to sustain these disciplines in-house.”

In a statement to CTV News, Ottawa Fire Chief Paul Hutt says Ottawa Fire Services offers these services to neighbouring municipalities through mutual and automatic aid agreements.

“Like insurance, they hope they will never have to use the agreement, but should a situation occur they have someone to call,” Hutt said.

Hutt added that Ottawa Fire Services has built-in redundancies to ensure there is always someone to respond locally within Ottawa in case a team is sent to another municipality for a rescue call.

Roy says the agreement would apply only to specialized rescue calls, and not routine fire suppression or other standard emergency responses.

“Ottawa Fire Services specialized rescue resources would supplement North Glengarry’s technician-level capability during complex, prolonged, large-scale, or resource-intensive water and ice rescue incidents where additional specialized personnel, equipment, or operational support may be required,” the report says.

The three-year agreement is based on a fee-for-service model, costs are only incurred when specialized rescue resources are requested and deployed.

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