Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our guests for being here today.
I guess I'm just going to push back on my colleague there a little bit. He seemed to be questioning where this was coming from. I know that my party was in power at the time. Last year my colleague John Brassard asked a question about the data, because he was concerned about it as well. The current minister said that it was to reduce recording requirements. That was why it was dropped at that point. It doesn't seem like this current government—even last year, when we were asking about it—is interested in returning to requiring the data to be recorded. That becomes a little bit of a capacity thing, depending on where you live in the country, in terms of how able you are to report. I know that our first nations communities are already some of the communities that have to do the largest report of reporting already. We hear that over and over and over again. In any case, one of the reasons we don't have the data is that it's no longer required to be reported.
Mr. Miller, one of the things I was very happy to hear—Mr. Peters, I'd like to hear from you as well—was with regard to the integration with communities next door. In my riding in Alberta, for example, all 14 first nations are what we would call remote communities. They're stand-alone communities in the wilderness. They all have some sort of fire program in place. They communicate fairly well with the local municipality, often because they're the only resource on the ground in that particular area. They're also contracted by the Alberta government for forest firefighting services, so there's that interplay as well.
We heard from one of the B.C. chiefs that they have 400 firefighters in their band. They fight forest fires all summer long. I'm wondering if you have some comments about the integration of firefighting services across the country. I understand the need for specific building code requirements for reserves and things like that. However, I would like to see our firefighting services integrated, with just one firefighting service across the country and the same kind of standards. We always hear about jurisdictional issues when it comes to radios and communicating and equipment that doesn't overlap. You're suddenly forced to work together and you have different equipment that you don't know how to use. I think everybody would like to see a seamless integration if you're a firefighter in Canada, whether you're an indigenous firefighter or a non-indigenous firefighter or a municipal firefighter.
I'll start with Matt and then move to Allan for some comments on that.