Health committee  I might add something in regard to flexibility. It's very clear to us that guidelines give flexibility, but guidelines need to be respected up to some point in time. If municipally or provincially they do not follow the guidelines, they will have to answer for their actions. And

Health committee  If I may add quickly.... Activities during a pandemic are managed by both the federal and provincial governments. A pandemic affects the whole country, in various places, while an epidemic is more at a local or provincial level. We came to share our position here, before you, ra

Health committee  Could I just add to this question? The H1N1 flu case is a good example of inadequate communication about the classification of groups to be vaccinated. Firefighters are all healthy individuals. We're all robust. Look at this guy.

Health committee  This guy was vaccinated and I was not. That's where the communication goes haywire. That's where we need to define. H1N1 is not the issue. The issue is pandemics. Should we do more classification? We are not specialists. Should we have not been vaccinated at all? In that case, d

Health committee  I clearly recognize firefighters as being in the same group as they are.

Health committee  I will try to answer your question again. In the case of a pandemic, even part-time firefighters will be called in. These people will be called upon by their communities to help out. These people will answer the calls for help that they receive. It is impossible for me to disti

Health committee  In regard to your question on statistics, first of all, I have to refer to Paul Hills' testimony, where he said that once you get a call, it starts out with a small bobo and ends up with a big headache—and not the patient's; it's your headache. That's the reality all firefighters

Health committee  According to our figures, there are 108,000 firefighters in Canada, and they can be found in all Canadian communities. I could not say exactly how many of them are professional firefighters. However, I can say that they all have the same goal of saving the lives of Canadians. The

Health committee  I'd like to add some comments on that. Firefighters have a variety of tasks. First, they respond to fires. That is the main emergency that they deal with. They also respond to car accidents. They help people in all sorts of situations when they are panicking and do not know who

Health committee  Madam Chair, could I answer the last question?

Health committee  Are we ready to participate with l'Agence de la santé? Yes, we are ready. The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs has already offered their collaboration. So to that question, yes, we are ready to work with l'Agence de la santé.

Health committee  If you don't mind, I'll try it in English. What I can say is that during the pandemic, we started off by getting access to the vaccine. We had the authorization locally to give vaccinations. We set up a private clinic to do the vaccinations, and when we got to the day of vaccin

Health committee  That's local management—they got orders from provincial management in l'Agence de la santé. So that's our reality. In that same week, our firefighters heard that in Montreal or another part of the province they got their vaccines. In dealing with a real pandemic situation, not

Health committee  Hello, Madam Chair. I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you about the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs' position. My name is Daniel Albert. I am the Assistant Director of the Gatineau Fire Services and a member of the Canadian Association of Fi