The City of Gatineau has reached an agreement in principle with its firefighters, ending a labour dispute that had dragged on for over two-and-a-half years.

On Wednesday the 227 member Association des pompiers et pompières ratified the eight-year agreement reached last week between the city and the union. The contract will begin retroactively from Jan. 1, 2008 and calls for wage increases tied to the consumer price index.

The final contract is expected to be drafted and signed in the next few weeks, the city said.

Gatineau mayor Marc Bureau expressed satisfaction that a deal had been reached, and said it was the fourth major group of workers in the city, after school patrollers, blue-collar workers and casual workers working at municipal pools to reach agreements.

The city's police, however, are still working without a collective agreement. Their last contract expired in January 2007.

Both the firefighters and police unions have had acrimonious relations with the city while their members worked without contracts.

In January the city suspended Gatineau's firefighters union president Stéphane Noël for six months after he said work to put out a blaze at an historic church was hampered by low water pressure.

The most visible act of protest for Gatineau police during stalled negotiations has been to wear cargo pants and khakis instead of police-issue slacks.

And twice in the last two years police cruisers have been vandalized with spray-painted messages that have made references to the stalled negotiations. Both city and union officials have suggested that frustrated officers might have been committed the vandalism.

Arbitration between the police union and the city won't begin until the fall.