Mr. Chairman, with regard to the fire prevention and education, the deputy minister indicated that a report was concluded. Was that through your office and the fire marshal's office to develop this strategy that he is making reference to?

Mr. Chairman, I realize that the training is in the mandate of the fire marshal's office, which is the prevention and training component of it. Mr. Menard is correct. I know, through the capital allocation, under buying fire trucks, they bring in almost all of the equipment, including scotch air packs and boots, the whole package that comes with fire fighting, particularly equipment. The responsibility of fire fighting is within the municipal arena.

More and more, we are having difficulty, not only acquiring volunteers, but it puts much pressure and demand on these volunteers. Most of them are people who work during the day. The only time they have available to participate to do their training and inspections and have meetings is in the evenings if they want to get on with a fire brigade. I know that many fire brigades are not as active as they used to be. It is getting more difficult to get more volunteers. I like the idea of volunteer fire brigades, but it is getting more difficult. It is harder to recruit volunteers. That is the issue that I am trying to get at.

I am suggesting that, perhaps MACA and the fire marshal's office should get together and develop something, a standardized training program for all communities, or even go as far as creating positions as fire chiefs so that these people can be mandated to do, not only the prevention part, but they also do house inspections and the planning of running a volunteer fire brigade. We're not going as far as saying that we want fully paid fire brigades. I know it gets very costly if you go that route. Even in tax-based municipalities, it gets quite expensive, especially in this time of restraint. Maybe we should move away from volunteers, particularly with the fire chief position. Maybe we could make it a half-time position or even full-time with a by-law officer or something. I think that whole area has to be looked at.

More and more, it is getting difficult. There are a lot of people interested in volunteering for the fire brigade, especially in the small communities. But the communities are getting larger and larger and it is getting difficult. It takes a lot of time and effort to do this type of stuff. I think the prevention part of it is the concern I have also, Mr. Chairman. There isn't enough being done at the community level. You are supposed to do house inspections, fire reports, et cetera, and I'm not too sure those kinds of reports are being done across the territories. I've taken a look when the fire marshal's office produced the statistics on the number of fires we've had in the territories. They are up. That's why I'm raising the whole concern about fire fighting at the community level.

I think more emphasis has to be put on this whole area, not only for training on fire fighting but also on prevention. Someone has to go to houses and do visual inspections so that people aren't storing paint, et cetera, in their furnace room. As a former volunteer brigade member, we noticed that people put things in weird places. They don't realize the dangers until you point it out to them. During inspections that I used to do, Mr. Chairman, we used to give reports to the private home owners, the department, the fire marshal's office, the municipality and, if it was a home owned by the Housing Corporation, we used to give them a copy so that all the deficiencies are looked after. We recommended that tenants move things out of the paths of their escape routes and so forth.

The whole area of prevention is not really being pursued at the community level and I'm starting to have more and more concern for the safety of individuals because fire prevention isn't promoted as effectively as it should be. I think the department has to revisit the whole area and take a serious look at it.

Mr. Chairman, I have other issues, but they are more about what the department is currently doing. It is more of a progress report, so I won't get involved with the issues the department is currently undertaking. I wonder if the Minister or his deputy can comment on the couple of items I just mentioned. Thank you.

Just one more, Mr. Chairman. In response to the Minister about fire prevention and education. The Minister indicated that the funding is unconditional. I think most Members understand that but there is a problem, particularly in non-tax-based communities. If you look at the state that the municipalities are in, if you look at the audits that were done on them, some of them are having serious financial problems. Even if we give them money for fire protection as unconditional funding, the first priority for that municipality would be to put that money towards their deficit. So in that instance, municipalities would do that, so it makes it more difficult for them to do anything with fire prevention or education at the community level. I have noticed many of our municipalities have a debt recovery plan in place and they are trying to get themselves out of debt.

For the last few years, we have had problems with the formula. It has only been two years since we implemented the last major changes to the formula financing for hamlets. Previously, because the municipalities weren't properly funded, they kept getting themselves into trouble, and many of these municipalities are still dealing with a debt recovery plan. Most of the funding, even though it is funded unconditionally, is put towards the deficit of the municipality. So it makes it even more difficult, when you talk about fire prevention and education at the community level. That doesn't even occur. The only thing you hear about is education material from the fire marshal's office, but nothing from the municipality in their fire prevention plans. The work isn't carried out at the community level. That is why I am raising these concerns. Maybe the department can take a look at giving separate funding for mandatory fire prevention. Maybe this whole issue should be reviewed by the department, rather than saying it is lumped into your unconditional funding. Perhaps it should be conditional funding. That is just a comment, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.