Lindsay Holm, chief of the North Battleford Fire Department. (submitted/City of North Battleford)

By battlefordsNOW Staff

CAFC

‘A very worthwhile trip’: Catch up with N. Battleford fire chief after representing Sask. at national conference

Sep 29, 2025 | 3:50 PM

North Battleford Fire Chief Lindsay Holm says the challenges facing his department are being felt across Canada and beyond, after returning from a national fire chiefs’ conference in Manitoba.

“We’re not the only city within our province and within all of Canada that are dealing with the same issues,” Holm said.

He represented Saskatchewan at the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs (CAFC) Fire Rescue Canada conference in Winnipeg from Sept. 21 to 24, speaking on behalf of the Saskatchewan Association of Fire Chiefs (SAFC).

Holm noted chiefs from every province took part, along with one from Washington state. He said many of the concerns were shared on both sides of the border.

“She was able to speak on some of the issues that she’s seeing in her home state, and coincidentally, a lot of the issues that I’d brought forward … are being faced with in states as well,” Holm said.

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One major theme was low-barrier housing and complex needs shelters. Holm said those facilities connect people with services instead of jail, giving them a chance at recovery.

“It actually moves them more towards getting them the help that they need to, and more focused on the recovery, as opposed to arresting them,” he said. “Just arresting them sets them up for failure, as opposed to moving in the other direction and setting them up [for success].”

Holm said homelessness, opioid addictions and the lack of affordable housing are challenges echoed by fire chiefs across the country.

“I’m absolutely amazed at how well our city’s starting to look, looking cleaner, and I think we’re on the right track … but it’s about now moving forward and trying to put the root causes of our problems [first] and being able to facilitate some of that change,” he said.

The fire chief also repeated his call for a national fire database, noting departments cannot currently access Canada-wide statistics.

“A lot of the stuff that we’re trying to move forward … is statistical based,” Holm said.

“Being able to access data Canada-wide is something that now we lack in the fire service, and it’s something that the [CAFC] is going to continue to push for.”

Holm said right now it is “very, very hard to get data from a Canada-wide perspective,” adding that chiefs have to share information with each other directly.

“That’s a little redundant in the sense that it takes up quite a bit of time … whereas if we were able to actually just pull data right off of the database, [it] would be a lot easier,” he said.

Rising costs of fire trucks and equipment were another concern. For example, in North Battleford the cost of a pumper truck has nearly doubled in just two years, rising from about $860,000 to $1.6 million for a comparable model, Holm previously noted.

“That is something that has a lot of fire chiefs concerned, just because of the rapid escalation of the cost of those fire apparatus. It’s very hard for us to define in a capital budget,” Holm said.

Wildfire response and its financial burden were also discussed. Holm said chiefs heard about the costs of deploying firefighters and equipment across provinces during major fire seasons.

He added that networking was one of the most valuable aspects of the gathering.

“It was a very worthwhile trip … the ability to network with chiefs all across Canada and … find out what their issues are and how they’re dealing with them. I think that was probably one of the most positive experiences that I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Holm said.

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