Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I feel with the situation that happened last year with the fire in Tsiigehtchic, I felt the communities, and the communities felt this as well, that they were not listened to. They wanted to go back and fight the fire, but were told by Fort Smith to lay off and that it would burn itself out. Look at the size of that fire, where a lot of private lands were burnt because of this fire. This fire burnt all summer. At the end of the day, it cost us more money to respond to it after it had become such a huge fire. The only reason we responded was because it was affecting the highway system and a tower owned by NorthwesTel.
Yet when the communities were saying let us get on with it and fight it, there was no one at the fire centre in Fort Smith who thought it was a priority. They would just as soon see the land burn all summer. I would like to make it clear here that I feel we have to allow the communities more say and more ability to respond to fires and give them the time to do it justice.
We have a lot of good firefighters in our communities. These people have trained for years to do that. As a government, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them the time they need to do an adequate job and save this government money.
I would like to ask the Minister when will the changes be made to allow for this time to be extended from 24 hours to 48 hours?