I'm not a permanent member of this committee, although I used to be at the start of this Parliament. I'm filling in today.
Having gone through pre-budget consultations previously something that's amazed me is the amount and size of what is asked of any government be it this government, our previous government, or any government. The asks as you do pre-budget consultation are just over the top unachievable. Let's put it that way. Of course, we sit here coming from our own frame of reference in our lives to be parliamentarians trying to determine value for money. When I hear a number of $500,000 to do a national program, it's such an infinitesimally small amount of money, and not knowing the scope of what you provide but listening to your testimony, it's amazing to me that it hasn't been renewed already. That being said, you're here advocating that it be renewed, and I would say when I think of the relationship most members of Parliament have in their own committees with the firefighters, most of us have a relationship somewhere along the line with that or with the firefighters in our own personal situations. It baffles me that it just isn't an automatic.
I appreciate your testimony, Ms. Guy, today with your what I would call rather modest approach of what is achievable. I'm not saying that to cast aspersions on anything from other people who are asking. They brought their priorities and they've thought them through and they brought them to this committee. But the reality, as I said, any government faces is the fact that it's a matter of priority, of sifting through everybody and all the asks and setting the realities.
I'm sad to say I was part of a lobbying organization back in the mid-1990s and we used to sometimes embellish our need. I'm just making that comment not so much to ask a question but to say, what are the things your organizations—and any of you can respond to this if you wish—can do and do well either for modest requests of government, and not just the federal government but perhaps the provincial and municipal governments if you do work with them, or do without funding, but something else that government supports could give you? Does anyone care to respond?