Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue for her leadership on Bill C-504. She is a real MP who shows leadership for Abitibi—Témiscamingue and for Canada as a whole.
My riding of Nickel Belt comprises mostly small communities. There are some full-time firefighters in Sturgeon Falls and some in Valley East. They are supplemented by volunteer firefighters.
I cannot believe what I am hearing from members on the government side and members of the third party about this piece of legislation. Bill C-504 is about federal leadership.
Let me talk a bit about Nickel Belt. I have a big riding that starts in the north in Foleyet, which is serviced by volunteer firefighters, and it goes to Mattagami and Gogama. I will stop at Gogama right now.
I received an email today from a firefighter from Gogama. I just wanted to know roughly how many calls those firefighters had per year. Gogama is a very small community of a couple of hundred people. The firefighters get 60 to 70 calls per year involving motor vehicle accidents, extrications, fires, medical calls, and all kinds of calls that volunteer firefighters would respond to.
There are even smaller communities in my riding, like Cartier, Onaping, and Levack. I will stop at Levack for now.
Levack has always been served by volunteer firefighters. Levack-Onaping is a special case because there are several mines in the area that are serviced by volunteer firefighters. They have been called to these mines to put out some fires. Those mines employ hundreds of people. I want members to imagine what would happen if one of those mines was burning and the firefighters could not show up. What if the place was to burn down? What would happen then?
I heard a Conservative member talking about the economic action plan. I am talking about a bill for firefighters, and he was talking about the economic action plan.
I am not going to be like the member for Mississauga—Streetsville and tell members I saw this, because I really did not see it, but I can just imagine how many bonfires were started because of the economic action plan, by people sitting around throwing books about the economic action plan into the fire just to warm up. That is just about all those books are good for, especially the last one because there is nothing in it. It is just an imaginary budget.
I am going to move on to Killarney, which is another town in my community served by volunteer firefighters. I have skipped over several communities to get to Killarney because it had a special cause not too long ago. Killarney is a tourist area. People work in the summer there and are on EI during the winter. As a result of government changes to EI, the volunteer firefighters did not want to volunteer anymore because they felt they were being punished.
As I only have a minute left, I want to read an email I received from another community in Nickel Belt:
The only thing I can add at this time is that many of our members, including myself, have been told under no circumstances can we respond to a fire emergency while on shift at work. This at times is a perilous situation.
Can members imagine that? If they have kids or grandkids—they must have some family—I want them to imagine their house burning down and volunteer firefighters being unable to respond to the call.
I say the same thing to the Conservative and Liberal members. I ask them to imagine having a car accident and needing to be extricated, except volunteer firefighters cannot help because they cannot leave their place of employment. What a real shame it would be to lose lives because employees could not leave their job sites to save lives or extinguish fires. What a real shame that would be.