Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning. On behalf of the Fort McMurray firefighters, IAFF 2494, I am grateful to be with you today to talk about my experience as a 22-year firefighter, currently serving with the rank of battalion chief, and to share my thoughts on why I support Bill C-224.
Six years ago, the world watched in astonishment as images of our city being overtaken by a massive wildfire were flashed across the news. Few people could forget the images of tens of thousands of citizens fleeing the area in their vehicles with a massive ball of flames in the background. I'll never forget hearing the ominous radio call from a fellow captain ordering crews to clear the Beacon Hill subdivision of the city as a 50-foot wall of flames started to engulf scores of houses in the area. My heart dropped and my thoughts ran amok when the scope of this emergency hit me.
With citizens evacuating, firefighters from Fort McMurray and eventually other cities in Alberta rose to the immense challenge in front of us, saving as much of the city as we could from the flames that were rolling mercilessly across our neighbourhoods street by street, and protecting the egress of our citizens and our own families trying to get out. Firefighters worked beyond the point of exhaustion, working up to 48 hours straight with little to no sleep and no food, putting themselves in immediate danger almost every minute, day after day. We endured smoke so thick it was choking. We felt intense heat as we chased rolling embers from street to street in our attempts to quell the massive wildfire. We did this for six days until the flames finally moved on.
In Fort McMurray 2,400 structures were lost, but I'm proud to say that 25,000 were saved. I think I can speak for my fellow firefighters when I say that it really was our finest moment, and a landmark in our careers that we will never forget.
Sadly, however, the dangers to the firefighters who raced to save Fort McMurray did not end when the smoke faded and the last of the flames were extinguished. The danger persists to this day in the form of illnesses that firefighters have suffered as a direct result of the massive, acute exposure to the toxic carcinogens we endured during this heroic response. These toxins were the product of tonnes of combusted organic and man-made materials cast into the air in thick pillows of smoke impossible for a firefighter to completely avoid even with modern personal protective equipment.
Three Fort McMurray firefighters contracted cancer in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 wildfire. One of them, Chris Relph, my good friend, died tragically of an aggressive form of cancer rarely seen in younger people. A proud and hard-working firefighter originally from Bathurst, New Brunswick, Chris was just 29 years old when he passed away in 2018, leaving behind a loving wife and a two-year-old daughter, in addition to his parents and other grieving family members.
The long-lasting effects of the 2016 wildfire on the firefighters who responded are still being studied. These also included respiratory problems and mental health injuries. We're concerned that more cancers may develop among the firefighters who helped save Fort McMurray.
We have all come to learn that cancer is an epidemic in the fire service. In Alberta alone, we have lost 51 full-time firefighters to job-related cancers in just the past 10 years. We have heard that a firefighter's cancer could be a cumulative effect of exposures throughout their career, or it could be a result of exposure during one specific emergency. For Fort McMurray firefighters, the wildfire of 2016 was that emergency.
We also know that cancer is a problem in fire departments across Canada. As firefighters, we have all lost colleagues to this terrible disease, we have all attended funerals and we have all consoled grieving family members while coping with our own grief. If anything can be done to reduce cancer's toll on our profession and our families, let's please do it.
Cancer in the fire service is a national problem that needs a national solution, one that strives to recognize the impacts of situations like the one we faced in Fort McMurray while creating equity and fairness for all firefighters across this great nation who risk their health and safety every time the alarm sounds and the trucks start rolling.
Bill C-224 addresses cancer in the fire service at a national level with measures that would undoubtedly make a difference and save lives, in my view. It proposes a solid framework that touches every aspect of this issue, defining the link between cancer and our profession, engaging the medical community and promoting research, data collection, knowledge-sharing and early cancer screening for firefighters, among other measures.
I'm grateful to my MP, Laila Goodridge, for inviting me to testify before this committee, and to MP Romanado for bringing this bill forward. It gives me comfort knowing that cancer in the fire service is becoming a national priority and that our federal government has our backs when we are putting ourselves in harm's way on behalf of our fellow Canadians.
Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.