Friday March 28 - Main Track Information

OFM Update

An update from the Office of the Fire Marshal Executive Team.

Speakers: Office of the Fire Marshal Executive Team

 

What is new at the OAFC?

Learn about what is new at the OAFC, including member services like the new Chief Officer Peer Support Program, as well as exciting changes to upcoming events, recent discussions with government leaders on strategic priorities and more.

Speaker : OAFC President Deputy Chief Rob Grimwood

Rob Grimwood is a Deputy Chief with the City of Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services where he oversees the Professional Development & Accreditation and Communications Divisions, along with serving as the Management Co-Chair for the Joint Health & Safety Committee.

Formerly Rob was the Deputy Chief of Training, Safety, & Special Operations for the City of Vaughan Fire & Rescue Service and the Fire Chief in the City of Dryden, Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Haldimand County. He has also served as a Firefighter with the City of Toronto.

He worked as a Paramedic for 20 years and spent nine years as the Paramedic Chief in Haldimand County.

He has been a member of the fire service for the past 28 years, the last 16 of which have been in various senior leadership positions. He is the President of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs (OAFC), Management Co-chair of the Ontario Fire Services Section 21 Committee and an instructor for Dalhousie University’s Fire Service Management Program.

 

Keynote - Emerging Stronger: The 7 Gifts From Burnout

The 7 Gifts from Burnout presentation is a 60-minute session aimed at fire chiefs, focusing on the transformative potential that burnout can offer when approached with the right mindset and tools. The presentation begins by exploring the nature of burnout, highlighting its emotional, physical, and mental toll on individuals. Through personal stories, such as "The Day I Almost Died," the presentation emphasizes the seriousness of burnout and introduces seven key gifts that can emerge from the experience:

• Gift of Awareness: Understanding one's stress, emotions, and physical body. Techniques such as box breathing and the physiological sigh are introduced as tools for self-regulation.
• Gift of Boundaries: Learning to set and enforce personal boundaries to protect against overwhelm, including the importance of saying "no" and managing one’s "stress plate."
• Gift of Emotional Intelligence: Emphasizing self-regulation, purpose, and values, and how these contribute to greater resilience and understanding.

The session encourages self-care practices like TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises), the importance of connection, and reframing time management as energy management to maintain overall well-being.

Speaker: Arjuna George

 

You're the Chief - Communicate Like it!

You are the Chief. All eyes are on you -- at the scene, in Council, during negotiations, at staff meetings and during community events. The pressure is on you to communicate and to communicate clearly. Each of these engagements comes with its own set of opportunities and challenges. This session provides participants with an understanding of how to prepare, what to say, how to say it…. and most importantly what not to say and do.

Speaker: Karen Gordon

Karen Gordon is a communications strategist with over two decades’ experience answering the bell for leading law firms and their corporate clients, employers of all stripes, emergency services organizations and sports leagues and clubs. She provides deep, strategically targeted expertise in practice areas encompassing employment and labour relations, corporate litigation, and crisis and incident management. Widely recognized for her communications knowledge, she appears regularly on radio and television as an expert commentator. 

Since founding Gordon Strategy in 2002 (then called Squeaky Wheel Communications), Karen has developed an extensive body of work punctuated by numerous high-stakes, high-profile, strategically complex engagements. Prior to Gordon Strategy, Karen cut her teeth in communications working in politics, business and government. 

Karen has a strong record of volunteer work, and she is on the Board of The Ottawa Hospital. 

 

OFM Training and Certification Portal Update

The OFM Training & Certification Portal will be approaching 1 year of being released at the time of NEFEC 2025. In that time, the majority of all Fire Departments in Ontario are onboarded with over 10,000+ members verified and registered in the system. The portal is continuously being updated and included the Ontario Fire College course catalogue, registration system, student training and certification records, Regional Training Centre functionality, and Learning Contract management. This session will highlight each of these features and provide insight into the next phases of functionality for the OFM Training and Certification Portal.

Speaker: Amy Baker, LMS Coordinator & OFC Registrar, Ontario Fire College

Amy Baker is part of the Training and Certification branch of the OFM and holds the role of LMS Coordinator and Registrar of the Ontario Fire College (OFC). In Amy’s year and a half with the OFM Amy has played a pivotal role demonstrating exceptional skills in developing, implementing, and fully rolling out the OFM Training and Certification portal provincially for the fire service. Amy brings with her extensive experience and transferable skills from previous roles, including Fire Department Coordinator and Regional Training Centre Coordinator. In Amy’s time with the OFM she has established and maintained strong working relationships across the Fire Service and will continue to grow and foster those in her continued interactions and commitment to customer service.

Jeff VanRybroeck, Assistant Deputy Fire Marshal Training & Certification, Office of the Fire Marshal 

Jeff VanRybroeck is the Assistant Deputy Fire Marshal of the Training and Certification branch for the OFM. Through his role he oversees the operation of the Ontario Fire College, Academic Standards and Evaluation and Development and Quality Assurance. Jeff has over 25 years of experience in the fire service and has a solid understanding of meeting certification needs across all types of fire departments. Through the OFM training and certification portal rollout, Jeff has had the opportunity to travel the Province and present this platform to hundreds of fire departments, and use critical feedback received to develop and continue to improve this product.

Round Tables

Operational, planning and management professionals from fire departments across the province are invited to come together to discuss current and emerging issues within the fire service. Designed after the Metro Fire Planners Conference, this interactive forum has been formatted for participants to share leading practices, seek ideas on how to mitigate challenges they are facing, and offer innovative ideas and solutions that they have found successful. Participants share local and provincial challenges, as well as highlighted best practices and lessons learned with other like-minded fire services.

To ensure that the discussion reviews topics important to our members, participants are asked to forward topics of interest to the OAFC in advance of the roundtable, which builds an intuitive, thought-provoking agenda. 

Past Round Table sessions have covered issues related to:

• Performance measurement and data analysis

• Organizational planning

• Staffing and deployment models

• Health and safety

• Recruitment

• Education and training

• Shared services and regionalization

• Labour relations issues