Goldie Ghamari - May 02, 2019


Question Period： Supporting Ontario's firefighters

Topics
fire regulations and support
Hosted by
Goldie Ghamari
Mentioned
Speaker Ken Stevenson Brian Wilson Berks Falls Kim Ayotte Carleton
Statement： 2019 Ontario Budget Statement： Tour of Nordion

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

172.99

Word count

730

Sentence count

38


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs at Queen s Park. Honourable Minister of Labour, Lisa Raitt, delivers a statement of support for Ontario's Fire Chiefs, and answers a question from a member of the Fire Chiefs Association.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I begin, I just wanted to welcome to the Legislature
00:00:06.320 the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, and in particular Fire Chief Pascal Meunier from Carleton
00:00:11.360 Place, Fire Chief Ken Stevenson from Berks Falls and District, and Fire Chief Brian Wilson from
00:00:16.080 Clarence Rockland, who I look forward to meeting with later today. I also want to give a quick
00:00:20.080 shout out to Fire Chief Kim Ayotte from Ottawa, who couldn't be here today. Mr. Speaker, my question
00:00:24.880 today is for the Solicitor General. Protecting citizens is at the core of our government's
00:00:29.280 work for the people and the enforcement of modern and robust fire safety rules protects
00:00:34.160 the lives of citizens as well as our hard-working firefighters and mr speaker we know that fire
00:00:39.840 regulations are a key part of ensuring the safety of our communities these regulations aren't always
00:00:45.440 on top of mind for everyday citizens but they have a big impact on fire services ability to do their
00:00:50.960 job could the solicitor general please let us know how improving these regulations are making
00:00:56.480 firefighters and citizens safer.
00:01:02.000 Opposition come to order. Solicitor General.
00:01:05.040 Thank you and thank you for the member from Carleton for your important question but also
00:01:09.600 for serving on the caucus advisory team for Solicitor General. You know her advice is very
00:01:14.800 valuable so thank you. I would also like to welcome and thank the fire chiefs for joining us today at
00:01:22.400 at Queen's Park. It's an important advocacy that you need to do to educate us as MPPs,
00:01:28.300 so thank you. Your officers, the brave men and women on the front lines, keep our families
00:01:34.020 safe. As a government, we're committed to ensuring firefighters and regulations support
00:01:39.300 firefighters across Ontario. Whether you live in Kenora or Cambridge, Ottawa or Oxford,
00:01:44.580 I can assure you that the regulations that we put in place are going to be appropriate
00:01:48.940 for the communities that you serve, and we will continue to do that. As you know,
00:01:53.420 there are some new regulations coming forward in the early summer that will really make an impact
00:01:59.420 for the services as well as the communities that we serve. I want to assure you that we
00:02:04.140 will continue to make sure that those regulations are appropriate for the size and the service of
00:02:09.260 the community that you serve. Thank you. Supplementary question.
00:02:13.580 Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and through you, I would like to thank the Solicitor General
00:02:18.840 for her response.
00:02:20.220 It's truly an honour to serve on the caucus advisory committee and to work with our first
00:02:24.020 responders all across the province.
00:02:27.820 Mr. Speaker, firefighters have always stood up for the safety of communities, and now
00:02:31.740 that they have a government that respects and supports them as they carry out very difficult
00:02:36.200 and very dangerous jobs each and every day, we ask these brave men and women to potentially
00:02:40.840 put themselves in harm's way to keep our loved ones and our communities safe. In return,
00:02:46.260 we see it as only fair to support them in their important duties.
00:02:50.160 Through you, Mr. Speaker, could the Solicitor General please tell us more about how our
00:02:54.560 government is providing better support to firefighters across Ottawa and Ontario and
00:02:59.880 improving fire safety?
00:03:01.440 Thank you.
00:03:02.440 The Solicitor General.
00:03:03.440 As you know, our government values the important work that firefighters do as they place themselves
00:03:10.320 in harm's way. I want to also give a shout-out to the volunteer firefighters because they
00:03:17.460 also play a vital safety role in our small-time communities. It's frankly why we amended
00:03:25.780 the Fire Protection and Prevention Act this past fall to ensure that full-time firefighters
00:03:30.120 can volunteer their services, if they choose, in their home community. I would be remiss
00:03:35.580 not to highlight, Speaker, your work for many years in opposition on this issue and of course
00:03:41.100 my friend and colleague, the Minister of Labour, to bring forward this amendment. It makes a real
00:03:45.980 difference in our smaller communities, so thank you. These amendments protect firefighters and
00:03:50.700 municipalities from any pressure to dismiss professional firefighters from what is commonly
00:03:55.760 referred to as double-hatting. This will also ensure that professional firefighters cannot face
00:04:00.640 Association penalties for double-hatting and to allow municipalities to include them in their
00:04:05.760 service model. Our government is restoring respect for first responders and including
00:04:11.200 firefighters, and I want to thank them for their service.