A volunteer firefighter position requires sacrificing your down time, your sleep, and sometimes hours from your regular work, which can lead to issues with your employer.

The UCP party introduced a bill this week known as the Employment Standards (Firefighter Leave) Amendment Act, where they asked the NDP government to ensure volunteer firefighters are guaranteed un-paid leave when duty calls, and ensures that employers cannot prevent them from responding to a call.

But is employers preventing volunteer fire fighters from attending calls really a big enough issue to warrant an amendment? 

Lacombe County Fire Chief Drayton Bussiere says in his experience, business owners go above and beyond letting his volunteer's answers calls, while others are not as accepting. But in the end, he understands it's all about priorities.

“The fire department always respects that our members need to pay their bills and so their jobs likely need to come before the fire department. So some of the members have had to make that decision in the past, some of them have gotten different jobs, some of them have had to decrease their responses to the fire department or even leave the fire department, and that’s just kind of the nature of running a volunteer fire service.”

Bussiere says, as a fire chief but also a citizen he's able to see both sides of the issue, and he's well aware of how much a volunteer department relies on the understanding of an employer.

He encourages volunteers to be straight up and honest about the unpredictability of fire fighter work.

“It’s mostly just an employer saying ‘hey that’s just not going to work for us’, or they say ‘yea you know when you are on call you can respond and we can deal with it on a per instant basis, depending on how busy it is,’ and those types of things.”

The bill was sent to a committee for review by the NDP government, which the UCP says is - quote- "A procedural maneuver that effectively kills the legislation."

Bussiere says he would like to see any future legislation regarding a bill like this to include options for employers, so they don't feel like they have no say in the matter.