Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We focus on emergency management and try to promote fire safety. Our fire chief goes into the school and makes himself available, and they do fire drills. What really gives me fear is that all this that you can see on this map is forestry. I don't have firefighters trained to fight forest fires, and we don't have the necessary equipment.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Five of them are on crutches right now. I don't know how much more we can take out of them. We take what we can get.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I know in our community, we've had issues with just trying to keep our SCBAs for the firemen to breathe. We had a system, a cascade system, a 1986 model, but it has been just recently put out of service by the inspector who comes by. He said, “Whoa, you can't be using that.” We now depend on the next department to help us to get oxygen.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think that having a marshal would definitely help in terms of providing some standards for fire safety in the homes and also with how we can support our staff. When we had a fire in our health centre, the staff didn't know how to take the fire, so we had to send the fire chief in to teach them.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Is my seven minutes up? I tried to speak really fast.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the invitation to appear before the committee. I would like to acknowledge unceded Algonquin territory. I am Chief Matilda Ramjattan. I'm from the small community of Lennox Island. Our membership is a little over 1,000. About half of those live on reserve.