Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that the Liberal government has completely ignored the request of Canada's firefighters for half a million dollars in funding for this very important hazardous training program.
The parliamentary secretary said that there was $500 million there and there is more money here, but why is it that the firefighters are still not being allocated the funding that was promised to them?
On March 27 of this year in the House, the Solicitor General said in answer to a specific request by this member that “the government, at an appropriate time, will respond to that question”.
Then on May 15 at the justice committee when I asked the question again, the Solicitor General said that they were looking into it and would respond at an appropriate time.
On April 29, the Minister of National Defence, in response to a question from my colleague, the member for Palliser, the labour critic, said, “...the government certainly supports this initiative”.
Why on earth, if the government supports this worthy initiative, will it not listen to firefighters, put the funding in place through the OCIPEP program and make sure that firefighters are in a position to respond effectively to these CBRN situations?