- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Barrie—Innisfil
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $99,360.72
- Government Page
- Oct/25/23 7:00:12 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be rising on Motion No. 96.
As many people know, I spent 30 and a half years as a firefighter. I am actually trained as an aircraft rescue firefighter. I spent a week up at Base Borden trudging through AFFF, which I am now finding out is a cancerous material.
Where I worked in Markham, we had Buttonville Airport. There was no active firefighting capabilities on site, and all of it was done through the municipality in Markham. I remember responding to several incidents of aircraft crashes, such as landing gear coming up and the aircraft not being able to land, and aircraft landing on top of buildings, so it was interesting.
I enjoyed being an aircraft rescue firefighter, to be frank, because of the training involved, such as understanding the different aircraft and some of the emergencies that could occur, including making sure that a means of regress was the number one priority and protecting the exits of those aircraft that were in trouble. I dealt with multi-engine aircraft, but I never dealt with large aircraft that we would see, for example, at Pearson or Vancouver international airports.
I want to thank the member for bringing Motion No. 96 forward. I think that it is well intentioned. I believe that none of us in this place want to limit or diminish the value of safety, either for the passengers, pilots and crew of an aircraft, or for those firefighters who are intended to respond. However, I am not sure that Motion No. 96 is the way to go about it, quite frankly.
There are a lot of stakeholders who need to be involved in this process, not the least of which is the International Association of Fire Fighters, whom I spoke with this afternoon, along with airports and the Airports Council. There are other stakeholders that need to be included in the process, including, for example, the pilots associations, such as ACPA, the Canadian Air Line Pilots Association and regional airport authorities. They all need to be involved in this process of understanding the full impact of what the motion proposes. In my opinion, this motion would be better off going through the process of the committee, and I heard the member for Winnipeg North talk about that. That way, we could get all of the stakeholders together.
How would this affect municipal agreements? There are many across this country in which local and regional airports have an agreement with a municipality. What are the impacts on cost? What are the impacts on personnel? These are the types of discussions that we should be having on this.
The motion does identify a problem, and I can tell members that in my time of being here, every time I have met with the International Association of Fire Fighters and the Barrie firefighters, they come advocating for improved responses at airports. There is no question that this is an issue. In fact, the regulations have not been addressed since the 1990s, so it is time that we have this discussion. Furthermore, the government has within its power the ability to initiate the type of regulations that are required to increase safety at airports. The minister, in fact, could do it with one swoop of the pen if he wanted to.
I believe that I will have more time to speak about the logistics of this at the next intervention, but as I stated, and I will make the point again, all of the stakeholders need to be involved in this process, and that would include the firefighters, the Airports Council, regional airport authorities, the Canadian Air Line Pilots Association and a whole list of others. The only way that can be done is through the process that is in place, and that is through the transportation committee.
Let us make sure that we get it there, have a fulsome discussion and look at the implications. I do not want to take away from the good nature of what the member is proposing here, because I believe it has been done in good faith, but this needs to be studied in its entirety to understand what the full impact is going to be on airports, on municipalities, certainly on our country and on safety as well.
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- Mar/27/23 2:07:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, firefighters from across Canada are in Ottawa this week for the 30th Canadian Legislative Conference of the International Association of Fire Fighters. As a retired firefighter and former president of Markham local 2727, I know first-hand just how important these next few days of advocacy will be for firefighters and their families.
In the coming days, MPs from all parties will hear about the increase in occupational illnesses like cancer among firefighters, including the need to remove PFAS from firefighting gear, now being linked to cancer and other serious health effects. There will also be a discussion for federally regulated airports in Canada to meet ICAO standards. Under the leadership of president Ed Kelly, the IAFF is laser-focused on protecting the health and safety of its 334,000 members and their families, both here in Canada and in the United States.
On behalf of our Conservative team to my former colleagues in Markham, to the Barrie and Innisfil firefighters and all firefighters who have come to Ottawa this week, welcome. We hear them, we respect them and we are here for them and their families.
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My Uncle Pete, who inspired me to be a firefighter, recently developed throat cancer. He spent almost 35 years on the job with the City of Toronto. In 1985, I got a job with the City of York Fire Department as a dispatcher. I had radio experience and naturally fit in as a dispatcher, but it was not enough for me. I saw the guys and girls on the floor. I saw what they were doing, and I wanted to be a firefighter.
In 1987, I applied to the Town of Markham Fire Department. It was the Town of Markham at the time. I got on the trucks. I actually became a firefighter. I could not believe it. I was 22 years old at the time, just turning 23. There I was, with five weeks of training, in the middle of January, training to be a full-time firefighter. It was never anything that I ever wanted to do. I had always wanted to be a radio broadcaster.
The equipment they gave us at that time was unlike the equipment today. We had hip-wader boots, basically. We had long coats. There was never, ever any protection for the groin area. Everything could come up. We actually got red fireballs gloves. For those who are here today, they were effectively made of plastic. If anybody got into a fire, they would actually melt on their hands. The equipment is nothing like it was with bunker gear.
Often there were times when we went to fires at that time and we would go back to the fire station and take a shower after a fire, and the whole basin of the shower would be black. The soot and the carbon that we took in would actually have been absorbed. Everybody thinks about the impact that inhalation has on a firefighter, but it is actually the absorption. We would be sweating. All of those materials that were burned, the carbon and the soot would actually go through our skin. We would go back and the whole basin of the shower would be black.
Just imagine what that was doing to our bodies, how it was impacting our bodies. I can tell the House first-hand how it impacted many of my colleagues.
There was a fire very early on in my career at Greenspoon, a demolition company on Woodbine Avenue. They would pack all of their materials and oils. I remember that day. I was not on the actual fire, but I did spend two or three days there. The first-in crews were talking about what they had seen. Literally, the flames were 100 feet in the air. It was black smoke. Just imagine oils burning. There was black smoke everywhere. It took literally three or four days to get that fire under control. Things were burning underneath.
At the time, the breathing apparatus that we had was known as a 2APD. It was not a Scott system or a regulator system, like we have now. We would actually have a hose dangling to an exterior regulator. We would attach the hose to the regulator. That is how we breathed with compressed air on our back.
Oftentimes, at that time, not knowing what we know now, and again, this was 30 to 40 years ago, we would take the hoses off. I spent two days there, and we would take the hoses off and let them dangle. All of that stuff we were breathing in, came in through the hose, which was a direct conduit to our lungs and to our bodies.
Because of that fire, Larry Pilkey, Paul Donahoe, Harold Snowball, Lorne Martin, Doug Kerr, who recently passed away, and Jason Churchill passed away. There were six people from that fire who passed away, because of an occupational-related cancer.
I remember Jason Churchill who died at 51 years of age. Nobody changed occupational health in this province of Ontario more than Jason Churchill did. This guy was a dogged advocate for health and safety for firefighters. I am sure his name lives on for many people in the fire service.
I worked with Jason for a while. I remember sitting in the washroom of the station. He came in and he had this giant lump under his arm. He asked me, “What do you think of that?” I said, “You have to get that checked out. That's not good.” He was literally dead within a year. There is no question in my mind, no question in my colleagues' minds that it was as a result of that Greenspoon fire that Jason Churchill died. I think of others as well. Gord Hooper is struggling with cancer right now. Bruce Zimmerman, my former captain, has been dealing with stomach cancer. All of them were at that fire.
I heard the hon. member for Kitchener Centre speak about the fire in Kitchener. I was at Ed Stahley's funeral. I know about that situation and how many of those Kitchener firefighters died. It is the same thing with the Plastimet fire in Hamilton. There are still firefighters today who are suffering from occupational illnesses as a result of those two fires, just like there are with the Greenspoon demolition fire.
This does not affect just the firefighters who contract cancer and eventually die. It affects their friends and families who live with the loss all the time. I can think of Luanne Donahoe and Larry's wife who have had to move on. I can think of the families that have to deal with this cancer. It does not just affect them emotionally; it affects them financially. For their entire lives they will have to deal with the financial loss of losing one of their loved ones.
I know there has been some discussion today about birth defects. I can tell members first-hand that for many of these firefighters and their families the greatest joy in the world is having a child, but many of the children suffer from birth defects as a result of what their parents contracted at these fires.
I am really lucky. I will share personally that I have a urologist who, when I retired at age 51, after I was elected to this place, took a baseline measurement because he has seen too many firefighters come through his office who have suffered from occupational cancer, whether it is prostate cancer, bladder cancer or brain cancer. There are 12 cancers that are recognized in Ontario right now as an occupational illness, at least at last count. He has taken that baseline on me every year I go for a check-up because he wants to know, because of my occupation, whether I am going to contract cancer as a result of all of those years of taking in, not just by inhalation but also by absorption, many of those carcinogens that are being created as a result of the materials today.
The equipment has improved; there is no question about it, but making sure that we are looking after our firefighters and their families becomes critical. With respect to that fire, the fire in Kitchener, as well as the one at Plastimet, we also have to think beyond firefighters, because there were police officers and EMS officers who were on the scenes who are suffering from those occupational illnesses as well.
Let me clearly and unequivocally state that I stand here as a former firefighter who loved every minute of my job every single day. There was not a day that I did not want to go in there. Maybe I did not feel like it the day after Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series in 1993. I am thinking maybe I should not have been at work that day.
This is an important piece of legislation not only for firefighters who have contracted cancer and passed on, but their families and friends as well.
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by thanking the member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne for proposing Bill C-224. I also want to thank the hon. member for Saskatoon West, because just 10 minutes ago, he gave up his time so that I could speak to this bill. I want to thank him for that.
In 1982, I was an 18-year-old kid. I had gone to Humber College for radio broadcasting. My first job was working the all-night shift at a country music radio station in Brandon, Manitoba. I had never listened to country music in my life. I grew up in Montreal and Toronto. I moved to Toronto when I was 12 years old. I realized very quickly, like most fledgling radio careers, that I was not going to make much money.
My uncle was a firefighter in Toronto. My Uncle Pete—
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