On the morning of October 22, 2021, North Frontenac council ordered a COVID-19 vaccination policy written for its own people. Two items later, on the same page of the minutes, it received a fire committee's decision that the firefighters in Ward 1 didn't need one. The township's firefighters answer to two different rule-makers, and that year the two went opposite ways.
The Kaladar/Barrie Fire Department covers Ward 1 from halls in Northbrook and Cloyne. North Frontenac owns half of it, and Addington Highlands runs it under a Joint Fire Committee of six elected members, three from each council. The township's own department covers the rest from stations at Snow Road, Ompah and Plevna. North Frontenac council sets the terms for those firefighters. For the Kaladar/Barrie firefighters, the agreement between the two townships hands personnel policy to the joint committee.
The committee took up vaccination first. On August 6, 2021, the Kaladar/Barrie fire chief, Casey Cuddy, asked it about requiring new recruits to be vaccinated. He warned that such a rule "will be decreasing the Pool of potential volunteers. As recruitment is already a concern is this something we wish to do." He recommended no policy. The committee passed his words as written: "we do not need a vaccination policy at this time."
That October morning, council told its Emergency Control Group to draft "a high-level Vaccination Policy for the Employees and Council." The direction speaks of employees, council and new job postings. It never mentions a volunteer.
On November 19, council adopted the policy into the township's personnel manual. The same resolution speaks of the requirements "approved by Council for Employees regarding Vaccinations."
That manual is the one North Frontenac's fire by-law ties its firefighters to. The by-law defines the department as the people the manual lists. It runs their employment and discipline through the manual, and it says a firefighter "includes a volunteer Firefighter."
So did the policy reach the volunteers at Snow Road, Ompah and Plevna? The by-law points one way and council's own words point the other. The answer sits in the manual itself. It's by-law #76-13, and anyone can ask the township clerk to see it.
Council knew the way to the joint committee. The morning it adopted the policy, council also took up its fire chief's plan to charge for car-accident calls anywhere in the township. It put that off "until it has been considered by the JFC." It never sent the vaccination policy there.
Addington Highlands, which runs the Kaladar/Barrie department, went its own way. Three days before North Frontenac put its policy in the manual, it passed a by-law adopting a voluntary one. That policy says who it covers, and it names volunteers. Voluntary still had teeth. Unvaccinated team members could be barred from indoor training where distancing wasn't possible.
Everyone in North Frontenac pays for both departments. There's no fire rate and no ward rate, just one levy. If you own property in Plevna, you're paying for the Kaladar/Barrie department, and if you own in Cloyne, you're paying for the other one. North Frontenac's share of the Kaladar/Barrie budget in 2021 was just over $250,000.
Between September 24 and January 10, the two councils moved on vaccination three times each. The joint committee didn't meet once. Vaccination wasn't on its next agenda, or on any public one since.
Nothing in the minutes of either council, or of the committee, ties either township's November policy to the firefighters at Northbrook and Cloyne.
The Ompah roster of the North Frontenac Fire Department lists Don Morton, this reporter's father, as a volunteer firefighter.