British Columbia Prime Minister defends suspended firefighter even more strongly

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VICTORIA – Premier David Eby stepped up his defense this week for a Victoria firefighter who was disciplined for writing an open letter to the premier about public safety concerns in the provincial capital.

“He is a firefighter. He knows what is happening on the street. He wants to share this information with me,” the prime minister told reporters on Tuesday.

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“If someone gets in trouble for bringing me this information, I will stand up for them and say, ‘Yes, bring me the truth from the street that you see,’ and that will help me be a more effective advocate for you.”

Firefighter Josh Montgomery was suspended for a day without pay after it came to light that he had written a letter to the prime minister criticising the city’s plans to build a homeless shelter in the Victoria neighbourhood where he lives with his young family – where open drug use is allowed.

“The proposed facility will serve 300 homeless people per day – just 30 meters from where my young daughters, ages four and six, play in front of our house,” the letter said.

“We residents have not had the opportunity to learn why the City of Victoria believes that relocating services for drug addicts and substance users to a residential neighborhood with children playing next door is a decision that will keep people safe and protect citizens from harm.”

British Columbia Conservative Party candidate Tim Thielmann announced the news of the suspension last week.

“This is a man who is risking his life to save ours,” said Thielmann, a lawyer running for the Conservatives in Victoria-Beacon Hill and currently represented by NDP minister Grace Lore. “A man who is fighting for the safety of his children and his neighbours. And they want to make an example of him just because he wrote to his prime minister?”

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The case has shaken the close relationship between the NDP prime minister and Victoria’s NDP-aligned mayor, Marianne Alto.

Eby initially told reporters that the firefighter was entitled to reinstatement, back pay and an apology. “No one should face consequences for writing to me.”

Alto fought back and called on the prime minister to pursue his own course.

“I am extremely disappointed that a provincial premier would find it appropriate or necessary to comment on what is obviously an operational personnel matter of a local government, especially when he is not in full possession of all the facts,” the mayor snorted.

Eby did not let this deter him, but used the exchange as an educational moment for himself.

“That’s my thing,” he replied this week. “My thing is people providing information to the government so we can make people’s lives better, and that’s my thing.”

Far from accepting that the firefighter’s suspension was a personnel matter, Eby believed that the letter issue was crucial to his ability to perform his duties as Prime Minister.

“The further you advance in politics, the more isolated you can be from the people who actually deliver the services or the people who actually experience what politics is like on the ground. That’s a very dangerous position for a politician,” Eby explained.

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“As a Prime Minister who has been committed to improving people’s lives through the political process for about a decade, I have only been successful and have only been able to make a difference for people when I have had access to first-hand information from people who know what is going on.

“And if anyone tries to interfere here, be it a head of a health authority or an employer somewhere – no, you should not criticise the government, you should not raise this issue – then that makes it impossible for me to do my job as Prime Minister.”

At this point in the Prime Minister’s speech, I half expected a choir to break into a refrain, accompanied by applause from the assembled examiners.

Yet despite Eby’s boastful posturing about the importance of “getting the truth from the street,” there is little evidence that the NDP government encourages this type of whistleblowing in the province’s public service.

Just last week, the online news service Northern Beat reported on the questionable practice of placing drug addicts and patients with severe mental illnesses together with frail elderly people in long-term care facilities.

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Reporter Fran Yanor relied on the testimony of a nurse who had the courage to speak on the record. She also confirmed the statements of health workers who spoke anonymously because they feared reprisals from the health region.

This is just one of many examples of health workers facing news bans and disciplinary threats if they reveal the true situation in hospital emergency rooms, ambulance services and the ailing network of emergency and primary care centers.

Campaigner Eby defends firefighter who lost his daily wages for criticising Victoria City Council.

However, there are good reasons to believe that officials in the provinces face even greater penalties if they dare to publicly denounce the failings of Eby’s own government.

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