The recognition is what's important for most families. They're willing to give up weekends and holidays with their family member who's serving in the community as a firefighter. There are certain risks to that, like not knowing whether their family member will come home at the end of their shift. When that family member acquires an illness that's attributable to their workplace occupation, it revictimizes the families when there's no recognition of that.
With the inequity I see in how certain presumptive cancers are being covered across different provinces, it's my hope that through this bill and the language within it, there will be an impetus from the federal level to help with that harmonization. Fighting fires is the same whether you're in Montreal, Ottawa or Vancouver. The chemicals we're exposed to are the same, and the application of prevention measures, awareness measures, and presumptive benefits and entitlements should be the same.