Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Kim Ayotte, and I am a chief officer with Ottawa Fire Services. I am here today, however, representing the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, the government relations committee.
The CAFC counts as its members over 1,000 fire chiefs located in every province and territory. Overwhelmingly, like me, its members are municipal public servants with the mandate of protecting the lives and property of citizens of the various communities. Within our membership, we also have fire chiefs from industry; airports; other institutions, such as universities and hospitals; armed forces; and many of the country's first nations. No other association can claim this breadth of support, making CAFC truly the voice of fire services in Canada.
The throne speech of October 2007 contained the following statement that was most welcome to Canadian fire services:
Our Government shares the concern of parents about the safety of consumer products and food. Canadians should expect the same standards of quality from imported goods as they do from products made at home. The Government will introduce measures on food and product safety to ensure that families have confidence in the quality and safety of what they buy.
The CAFC stated its support for the throne speech announcement. It supported Bill C-52 and it supports Bill C-6. The primary reason for our strong endorsement of Bill C-6 is stated in our brief, which I'd like to state for the record today.
A significant percentage of responses for every fire department has important consumer product safety implications. Stovetop fires, electrical fires, electrocutions, accidental poisonings, strangulations, and the careless use of candles as well as matches and lighters are a few examples in this regard.
Special mention, however, should be made for the increasing use of chemical compositions in residential furnishings and clothing. Our submission points out that counterfeiting is a serious consumer product safety problem. The use of counterfeit certification marks enables unsafe and deficient products to gain widespread access to the market, and are a direct risk to consumers.
In addition, we are deeply concerned about the vast quantities of cigarettes being imported into this country that do not meet the low ignition propensity standards that CAFC, Health Canada, and the standing committee worked diligently and cooperatively to enact. These illegal cigarettes are far more likely to remain ignited when unattended, and are therefore products that not only threaten the consumers of such cigarettes; they also jeopardize innocent third parties.
Clauses 6 through 9 of Bill C-6 require that no person shall manufacture, import, advertise, or sell a consumer product that is a danger to human health and safety. The CAFC believes the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act will be useful in combatting counterfeit products and illegal products that are currently available to Canadians.
Some submissions that have been presented to the standing committee call for amendments to Bill C-6. To the degree that these amendments are being offered with a view to improving these provisions, they are welcomed by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. However, to the degree that they will weaken the bill, and are intended to unnecessarily delay its implementation, we trust that the standing committee will not support them.
Officials at Health Canada and the members of the standing committee are all to be congratulated when it's considered how far we have come towards improving consumer product safety since October of 2007.
On behalf of our association, I want you to know that I truly appreciate the opportunity you've given me to speak here today. I look forward to receiving your questions.
Thank you.