Once again, there are dollars that are given to the fire department. In many cases, the community has to divvy up the dollars, and they don't get to the fire department.
Our current push would be education and fire prevention. The reality is that you can have the best fire department in the world, but if you don't have an operating smoke detector and a home escape plan, people are going to die. I think that whatever program is, it has to be thought out from the beginning to the end.
The Department of Indigenous Services had a program. The intent was to put smoke detectors in every native home—a very good idea, life-saving.
I'm not sure how the program was developed, but there was a lack of planning in the sense that they didn't identify how they were going to put the smoke detectors out, who was going to install them, or what would be the measure of success. What happened was that 10,000 smoke detectors were shipped out. Some ended up in the public works garage with nobody to put them out, and it ended there.
If we were to ask how many detectors were installed and whether they were working, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you. We don't have a measurable system.
Once again, it was a very good program, and the aboriginal firefighters support it, but we need to think these types of things through and maybe give extra resources for hiring somebody in the community to make sure it is followed through on. Then, more importantly, six months down the road, we need to find out if the detectors are still there and whether the batteries are in them.
I know there is a push to give a smoke detector with a 10-year battery every time a child is born, with a little bit of public education. That will save or monitor the child for the first 10 years of life. It's something that seems to be getting a lot of attention.
If we have limited resources, we need to carefully think out the programs and ensure they're followed from A to Z. The smoke detector was a very good initiative, but there were problems.