Thank you, Madam Chair.
I come from Barrie, Ontario, and I've talked about this issue with local firefighters. I have a lot of sympathy for their concern on this issue.
I have an interesting story about how they're all working in the same area in terms of being first responders. I talked to a nurse, Kim Sweeney, and a police officer, Mark Hyatt. They told me about the percentage of nurses, police officers, and firefighters who are married. It is incredible. They mentioned about 10 different cases of firefighters, police officers, and nurses in Barrie who actually are married, because they work so closely together. There are EMS nights. The reason they have this close relationship is that in many cases, in a lot of their work in their day jobs or night jobs, they are there first. They get called to the same calls. That's why I think there was a concern from police and firefighters about their not being on that list.
I realize there's an effort to have provincial discretion on this. How far have some of the provinces gone on pandemic preparation? In the case of my home province, Ontario, was there a rationale as to why firefighters weren't included on the Ontario list? I understand that in some parts of the country, there might have been inclusion.
I apologize if this was raised in the first hour. I was at a different meeting during the first hour.
Could you maybe enlighten us on that?