Since the island-wide fire service was formed from the merger of the City of Montreal's and suburban municipal fire departments seven years ago, some demerged cities, like Côte St. Luc, which never regained their fire departments, have complained consistently about their loss of on-site fire inspections.

These have been mostly replaced in the merged fire department by a computerized risk assessment model, which greatly de-emphasizes on-site inspections. There is disagreement, however, even among fire prevention experts, as to whether the new system is foolproof.

According to an auditor's report Berku says Côte St. Luc officials received recently from the Agglomeration Council, the new Montreal fire department "was not doing its job" in recent months, "it wasn't doing proper inspections."

In July, just one regular inspection was conducted in Côte St. Luc, six complaints and one intervention request were received, and there were 44 follow-ups from previous visits. Prior to the merger, Côte St. Luc had prided itself on having a proactive approach to fire prevention and conducted regular on-site inspections.

"It's just not acceptable," added Berku. "It's not what we were used to in Côte St. Luc, or what any other municipality was used to prior to merger, and we really need some better fire prevention and inspection. We knew this was going to happen when they merged the fire department," said Berku.

"Obviously we had very little impact during the merger years. Even though we weren't merged with Lachine and LaSalle, these cities had very effective fire inspection services, as we did." Over the past two years, the declining number of fire inspections conducted in Côte St. Luc has become more evident than ever.

According to a list obtained from the Montreal Fire Department by Côte St. Luc city council in 2006 and made public, Côte St. Luc had just seven fire inspections in January that year — about one or two per cent of the inspections conducted before the fire department merger. Côte St. Luc's public safety commissioner, Glenn Nashen, pointed out at the time that none of the inspections took place in health care institutions, retail facilities or other large gathering places.