Thank you, Chair and honourable members of the committee. I thank you for inviting me to appear before you today to speak to the very important issue of fire safety and emergency management in our first nations communities. I am accompanied by Peter A. Beatty, chief of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, Saskatchewan.
Before beginning, I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on unceded traditional Algonquin territory.
I will begin by briefly describing how I have organized my office and its operations to support my mandate of providing emergency preparedness and fire safety training to all of Saskatchewan's first nations people and communities.
My office conducts a range of activities in support of Saskatchewan's first nations communities. I have organized it into two divisions.
First is fire and safety. We provide community training in all aspects of structural and wildland/urban interface firefighting. We provide advanced training in other areas such as auto extrication, water and ice rescue training, confined space, and a multitude of other training, depending on the community's needs. We provide fire prevention programs with the communities as well. We perform fire investigations and fire inspections for Head Start and day care buildings.
Next is emergency preparedness and response. We provide all aspects of emergency preparedness training to all of Saskatchewan’s first nations communities. We also respond to emergencies in communities, when called upon to do so by the elected officials. We will set up and help to run a community or regional operation centre when it's requested by an elected official. We provide support and guidance to communities affected by emergencies, as well as act in a liaison capacity between the communities and other municipal, provincial, or federal agencies involved in the emergency.
In terms of human resources, my office has a total of eight positions, one of which is currently vacant at this time. I have four staffers for fire and safety training, and four staffers for emergency preparedness training and response.
I'll now address our challenges. I am going to read from an article by Professor James Waldram, of the University of Saskatchewan, who did a study on the Wollaston Lake fire and evacuation. He said, "...the irony is clear: the disaster of which many residents spoke pertains not to the threat of wildfire, but to the efforts to protect them from it.”
As emergencies continue to become more and more prevalent across Canada within our first nations communities, we need to ensure that all of our fist nations communities across Canada have the proper training and people in place to ensure the least amount of disruption to these communities. To do this we must ensure that sufficient support structures are put in place to manage these emergencies properly.
We must also ensure that we understand the effects that chronic disruptions to community life can have on these communities long after repatriation. In my opinion, a support staff of four for over 100 communities in Saskatchewan does not meet the requirements to ensure safe community readiness in either fire safety or emergency preparedness.
The other challenge is that the funding that is received for the staffing level of eight is on a year-to-year basis and is obviously not very conducive for qualified staff hiring or retention.
In my role as vice-president of the Aboriginal Firefighters Association of Canada, AFAC, we have been leading a project to design and build a national fire marshal’s office in collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations leadership and staff, regional first nations partners, and key allies.
Our tribal council stands firmly in support of the creation of this office as long as its development is guided by first nations. We feel it is very important that the office is designed by us, for us. This office could ensure that proper standards and codes are being met and followed, which in turn would help to ensure adequate standards for our first nations communities and their levels of preparedness in the emergencies field in the following ways: remove regional disparity; develop national standards for emergency services within first nations; provide needed fire prevention focus; support regional and community incident response; build a base of first nations emergency services expertise; gather incident data to be used to redefine what needs to be changed, enhanced, or supplemented in first nations emergency services; and help to ensure adequate funding to existing compliant emergency services offered by first nations institutions.
In conclusion, again, thank you to the committee for inviting me to discuss fire safety and emergency management and for the opportunity to ensure that you, as our elected officials, have your questions answered from the boots-on-the-ground emergency officials.
This concludes my opening statement. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have for me.