Thank you, Majid, for sharing your story. Sharing is exactly what makes this so special for me. I'm probably the luckiest MP in the House right now. I have colleagues like you. All of you have supported me in this, and it's not about me. You can imagine what that says to the 126,000 firefighters across Canada. They are seeing politicians come together, regardless of political stripe, and we're all fighting for them. They are the first ones in the house and the last ones to leave. They're asking us to be there for them, and that's what this is about.
I love the fact that you brought up the memorial grant program established in 2018. It provides families of first responders, including firefighters, who die as a result of their duties, with a one-time lump sum, tax-free direct payment of $300,000. The purpose of this grant.... The program includes the loss of life resulting from occupational illness attributable to employment.
How it works in terms of its criteria is that a presumptive list of occupational illnesses and related years of service, based on established provincial and territorial practices, is maintained. In terms of eligibility, the grant will look at the province of practice for firefighters. Depending on which cancers are part of the presumptive list, they would be eligible for this program.
Obviously, as you saw from the map, there is no consistency among the provinces as to which cancers are recognized or linked to firefighting, so the program is currently applied unevenly across the country. The research doesn't change, Majid, when we cross the border into a different province. Hopefully, as part of this, we'll be looking at the memorial grant to see if it could be applied more evenly across the country.