Mr. Chairman, I am aware that some communities did in fact have fire fighting equipment to respond to crashes in the form of foam or dry chemicals. This in fact was some equipment that was turned over from Transport Canada, that was turned over to Arctic airports at the time.
The training that goes with this, there was no funding from Transport Canada in regard to training local fire fighters in the communities to handle this equipment, so it fell on MACA and the community to try and resolve the problem by supplying some form of training to handle this equipment.
However, this is a voluntary service that they have in these communities, and it is not always available on a 24-hour notice. Therefore, there is a problem of having the equipment or the fire fighters respond to situations at the airports.
MACA has tried, I know, to work with the communities to address the situation through the training that was available under their programs, but the communities still felt there was a need to have some form of training to actually respond to a fire at the airports. To my knowledge, the process is still ongoing and I do not know at what stage it is sitting.