Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the federal NDP, it gives me great pleasure to rise on this important bill. I want to thank the hon. member for Malpeque for bringing it forward.
Most of us in our ridings across the country have volunteer firefighters and they do an outstanding job. Every Tuesday in my riding is a training night for all the firefighters. They train hard and afterwards they get together in a camaraderie on what they are doing.
It takes a very special person to answer a call at three in the morning in a winter storm and go to a house fire or to deal with an issue of a medical emergency. These people do this with very little or no pay whatsoever. In fact, they do not even want a thank you. They do it because they know they are serving their community. They know it because they feel in their heart of hearts that what they are doing is just and it is right.
On Sunday on the CBC in Nova Scotia there was a half hour show talking about what is happening in rural Canada. Many communities are starting to lose their volunteer firefighters. They are not losing them because of a lack of interest, they are losing them because of the economic reality of rural Canada. I remember very well in Newfoundland and Labrador during the cod crisis of the early 1990s many communities basically lost their best and brightest. The first thing to go, besides people moving down the road, was the firefighter.
Can we imagine a community that loses its volunteer firefighters and can no longer provide any kind of fire coverage for its community? The insurance companies come along and if we do not have fire protection of some kind they are not sure if they are able to insure the particular homes or properties. That puts these communities and families at great risk.
At the end of the day, there will be volunteer firefighters across this country willing to answer the call. In many cases they know they are risking their lives for the benefit of everyone. That is why this bill is important. That is why it should be supported across all political lines and it should be done fairly expeditiously.
I would like to expand on a bill that I have and not just piggyback on volunteer firefighters, but we need to look at volunteers in this country as a whole. In Nova Scotia alone volunteerism generates approximately $2 billion of economic activity. Imagine what it would be like in Ontario, Quebec and the bigger provinces.
Without volunteers we simply would not have the society that we have today. I am sure that many of my colleagues in the House of Commons and in the Senate have volunteered many hours of their time and their family's time over the years to benefit their community. That is the beauty as many of us, as busy as we are as MPs, still in some way manage to volunteer to help out in our community, be it fundraising, looking after our community or whatever it may be.
If it were possible to expand the debate, I think that all volunteers who show a certain number of hours per year, and my bill specifically says 250 hours, should be entitled to a $1,000 tax credit.
Years ago when I represented the Eastern Shore as far as the Ecum Secum Bridge in Nova Scotia, I knew a Lions Club member that would volunteer to drive people from Sheet Harbour all the way into Halifax, which is well over an hour drive, and he did this on his own. He did not ask for remuneration or anything of that nature and that was when gas was at 75¢ a litre. Now, at $1.18 a litre in Halifax, we can imagine how expensive it is for that person to volunteer to do that. However, he still does because he knows it is the right thing to bring people with disabilities or people with very low income into Halifax to either do major shopping or see their medical professionals.
It is people like that who we need to honour every day and not just in this House of Commons but in the Senate as well. At this time I want to send a special kudos over to our colleague from London who himself was a long term firefighter before he entered the halls of Parliament. He deserves a great round of applause for his great work as well.
My own brother-in-law was a firefighter at the Vancouver airport for over 32 years and he has just retired. He fortunately never had any major incident of any kind to affect his health or his life and he feels very blessed by that.
However, he knew many other firefighters who came down with various illnesses and cancers because of the chemicals they were exposed to. These were paid firefighters. Imagine the number of volunteers out there.
The volunteer firefighters in the areas of Fall River, Musquodoboit Harbour, Lake Charlotte, Chezzetcook, Eastern Passage, the whole crew, are some of the best citizens in this country. They love what they do, but the reality is they need more support.
The city I live in has only so much money to provide in terms of equipment and everything else. The government and all parliamentarians need to understand that giving them a little stipend like this may be beneficial to at least cover the costs.
I again want to thank my colleague from Malpeque for bringing this very important bill forward and I hope it will pass very soon. In fact, it would be lovely if it was in tomorrow's budget, but we will have to wait until four o'clock to see if indeed that is the case.
Once again, a tip of the salt and pepper cap to all volunteer firefighters and especially their families. Those who volunteer also have families who worry about their return. I want to thank the families, the individual members, and all communities right across this country.
