moved:
Motion No. 388
That the House hereby affirm its support for the following measures to support Canada's firefighters which, in the opinion of the House, the government should act upon promptly: (a) the creation of a national Public Safety Officer Compensation Benefit in the amount of $300,000, indexed annually, to help address the financial security of the families of firefighters and other public safety officers who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty; (b) the recognition of firefighters, in their vital role as “first responders”, as an integral part of Canada’s “critical infrastructure”, and as “health care workers” under the Canada Influenza Pandemic Plan, entitled to priority access to vaccines and other drugs in cases of pandemics and other public health emergencies; (c) the specification of firefighter safety as an objective of the National Building Code of Canada; and (d) a review of the National Building Code of Canada, in conjunction with the International Association of Firefighters, to identify the most urgent safety issues impacting firefighters and the best means to address them.
It is my great pleasure today to begin debate in the House of Commons on my private member's motion, Motion No. 388, about firefighter safety. After years of patient and persistent presentations to various parliaments by firefighters from every corner of Canada, Motion No. 388 draws together in one motion the three specific requests that Canadian firefighters have been making over the years to achieve greater acknowledgement of the risks inherent in the work they do.
None of us can doubt for a moment how valuable these courageous men and women are. On a routine basis every day, they put their lives on the line so the rest of us can live in safe and secure communities. It is not just about fighting fires, as crucial as that is in itself. It is also about being first responders, the people most likely to be on the scene first in response to all manner of emergency situations. It might be a traffic accident or a hazardous spill. It could be a heart attack or a drowning. It could be a house fire or an industrial blaze, like the one that lit up Winnipeg just a couple of nights ago.
Whenever Canadians reach for the phone and dial 911, they expect top-notch rescuers to be on the road in seconds to help them out of a dangerous situation. Lives are at risk. The circumstances could be and likely are perilous for both the victims and the rescuers alike, but we know we can count on the skill and expertise of Canadian firefighters to respond quickly, in the most effective manner humanly possible and with the bravery and compassion that these situations often demand.
Here is a sobering statistic. Every year in Canada, on average, some 18 firefighters give their lives in the line of duty. On the one hand, some may say that sounds like a low number, but think about it. It means every three weeks somewhere in Canada a firefighter dies on the job, every three weeks, the ultimate sacrifice in service to the public so others can live and be safe. It is appropriate and proper for the Parliament of Canada to examine ways in which the Government of Canada can respond constructively to the three simple ideas that Canadian firefighters have been advancing for years to better promote their safety. It is a matter of common sense and fundamental respect for the invaluable service performed by these members of our society.
These are issues that cut across all party lines, and I am grateful for the support and encouragement for Motion No. 388 that has come from all sides of the House. Let me also thank the International Association of Firefighters and a great many other individual firefighters, both professional and volunteer, along with many other public safety officers in this country, who have endorsed this motion and urge all Canadians to get behind it.
The three points that are covered in Motion No. 388 are as follows. First, the motion recommends to the government the creation of a public safety officer compensation benefit. This would be a one-time payment of $300,000 to be paid by the Government of Canada to the family of a firefighter or any other public safety officer who is killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty. In principle, this is not unlike the community heroes fund that was in the public domain for debate a few years ago, and it was a very popular concept.
The idea acknowledges the service and sacrifice of those whose jobs inherently put them at risk to protect the public. It helps to ensure their families are well taken care of. A public safety officer compensation benefit parallels certain provisions in some federal collective agreements—for the military and RCMP, for example—but sadly, most Canadian firefighters are simply not in a position to bargain for a provision like that, or their employers, usually municipal governments, are not in a position to provide it.
Motion No. 388 offers a way to treat all public safety officers equitably, while fully respecting every level of government jurisdiction. The estimated cost of this measure is in the range of just $10 million to $12 million per year. On an annual federal budget of more than $250 billion, the annual cost of a public safety officer compensation benefit is equivalent to the tiniest of rounding errors.
It is also worth noting that a similar benefit has been in effect in the United States for decades, since 1976, a federal benefit provided to all U.S. firefighters at every level as a gesture of national responsibility and respect.
The second major feature of Motion No. 388 deals with the priority lists that are prepared by governments to serve as guides, not binding legal edicts but guides, for the distribution of sometimes limited volumes of vaccines and other drugs during pandemics and other public health emergencies. The basic question is this. Who gets the vaccine first? It is a tough judgment call. Difficult choices have to be made.
In broad terms, when we look at the protocols from previous pandemics, there are three general categories of vaccine recipients. The first is those Canadians who are most vulnerable and at the greatest risk of getting sick, the primary victims. The second category, with virtually equal priority, is those primary health caregivers who take care of those vulnerable people and those at greatest risk. The third is the general public.
Within these broad groupings there are certain subsets, but the concern of firefighters is that this general hierarchy of priorities for receiving vaccines during public health emergencies appears to rank firefighters in the third category, that is with the general public, or at the very bottom of the category about caregivers.
Firefighters submit, and I agree, that as guidance to those who carry the serious responsibility to implement vaccine sequencing during emergencies, firefighters should consistently be at the top of the grouping of caregivers, as is the case in the United States and in many other jurisdictions. I say this for two reasons.
First, at all times, and especially during times of public stress like a pandemic, Canadians need to know their crucial public safety agencies, like fire departments, are fully functional, fully staffed, up to strength and ready to go no matter what. We do not need and we do not want a compromised firefighting system on top of a pandemic.
Second, and even more important, most firefighters are first responders who function as front-line health care workers dealing in raw circumstances with people in trouble in traffic accidents and so many other emergency situations. They do the initial rescue, the assessment, the first aid, the primary treatment.
During a pandemic they will undoubtedly be exposed to people in respiratory distress and suffering other ailments. Firefighters need to be able to do their front line, first responder, health care worker jobs with full confidence and the full assurance that they are as secure and functional as humanely possible. If firefighters cannot do that job at the scene of a public emergency, then at least some of those suffering from pandemic diseases will simply not make it to the doctors and the nurses, who will be waiting for them in the emergency room.
Finally, Motion No. 388 deals with the National Building Code of Canada. It makes the simple and logical point that firefighter safety should be included among the objectives of that code. Is it not already there one might ask? That is a question that a lot of Canadians have asked. The answer is that it is there in the United States and in many other countries, but not clearly in Canada, especially with the advent of rapidly changing construction techniques and building materials.
Twenty-five years ago a typical building might take 15 to 20 minutes of burning before it became a full-fledged blaze. It was obviously an urgent situation, but it left a fair bit of time for firefighters to arrive on the scene and to rescue people and property from the scene of the fire.
Today, what used to take 20 minutes 25 years ago may now just take 3, 4 or 5 minutes. It is not good enough to say building code standards designed for “occupant safety” serve just as well to achieve “firefighter safety”. The two are not the same for this fundamental reason.
While occupants will be doing their very best to get out of a burning building just as fast as they can, firefighters, by the nature of their job, will be going into the building, into the teeth of the blaze to work as long as they can to rescue victims and fight the sources of the fire. That is why “firefighter safety” needs to be specifically included in the code.
That is also why the government needs to review the code, urgently, and to do so in co-operation with firefighters and other experts who can identify the areas that need to be addressed and work on the best possible solutions.
That is it. There are three simple things in Motion No. 388: first, an affordable benefit for the families of public safety officers killed or injured on the job; second, an appropriate high-priority ranking for firefighters to receive vaccines during pandemics, particularly in their critical role as first responders and health care workers; and third, the inclusion of firefighter safety in Canada's national building code.
These measures have huge support among firefighters and most Canadians across the country. They are practical, modest, fair and reasonable. They are consistent with international standards. They are important gestures of respect from the Parliament of Canada to the firefighters of Canada.
I would ask all of my colleagues in the House of Commons to support these measures during this debate and to support Motion M-388 when it comes to a vote later this year.