Thank you very much, Chairperson.
First of all, thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I feel that you've provided us with detailed and thorough information of the actual experience, and, of course, that's very, very valuable. I don't think you have to convince us of how important it is that firefighters be included in the top tier.
I know in my community in east Vancouver, which includes the downtown eastside, with the role the firefighters play, particularly in terms of the people who are on the street and are very marginalized, high-risk—their health is compromised—it would be unthinkable that firefighters would be compromised because a plan wasn't properly executed. I think the subject we're discussing today is very real and obviously has direct consequences for your member firefighters. I'm glad to hear that it was a better experience for the paramedics.
It seems quite extraordinary that we are at a committee, listening to this issue to try to fix it and work it out, and this wasn't addressed a long time ago. I was one member of Parliament, and I know there were other members, who wrote to the minister last year as a result of the lobby by the IAFF to ask the minister to be proactive on this issue. The response we got was “Here is the plan. It's basically implemented by provinces and territories.” It was sort of passing it on.
It's very clear from what you said today that this is unsatisfactory and that we need to take more assertive direction and action.
I wonder if you could answer a couple of questions. First of all, is there any sense of what kind of lack of coverage there was? You've given us the number of firefighters, but could you say that more than 50% had difficulty getting the vaccination because they had to hassle at the local level? It would be nice to have a sense of that, even if it's anecdotal.
Secondly, you made it very clear that you're asking us to say something about the revision of the plan that's under way. I'm hoping that, as a committee, we could maybe write a letter or something to the minister.
I wonder if you have any specific wording you would want to include in this, so we can be very, very clear that what we're saying needs to be addressed in the revision of the plan.