Mr Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): My question today is for the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. Before I ask the question, I would like to say how pleased my wife and I were to see you, Minister, and many other elected officials at the Cecilia Zhang memorial service on Saturday. Sadly, events like these bring into perspective the realities of life we face each day.

Minister, since your party formed the government, numerous volunteer firefighters have been forced to resign from small rural fire departments. Last Wednesday, you mentioned in a response to the member from Simcoe-Grey a mediation process that you would like to have in place to resolve the double-hatter issue. Can you clarify exactly what you meant by "mediation," or is this just another stalling tactic while we lose valuable volunteer firefighters in rural Ontario?

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Hon Monte Kwinter (Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services): Members will know that there has been an ongoing dispute between the association of professional firefighters, the fire marshal's office, the fire chiefs, AMO and all others who are concerned about the fact that volunteer firemen who are also professional firefighters are being prevented from responding to fires.

This is unacceptable. The idea that any citizen of Ontario would be put at risk because of a dispute between two factions that are in dispute is unacceptable.

Having said that, I have been meeting with all of the parties for some time and have told them that if we can't mediate this, then I will bring in legislation. I stand by that statement. The mediation is being scoped so that they know coming in exactly the direction we would like to go.

Mr Dunlop: Duplication mediation I don't believe is the answer. I understand that when my colleague Bob Runciman was the minister, he appointed the Honourable George W. Adams, a renowned mediation expert, to conduct talks with fire services stakeholder groups on this very delicate issue. He couldn't find a compromise, but he recommended a solution.

So I say to you that the answer is right before you in the form of the Adams report. I ask you, now that the safety of small-town Ontario is at risk-and believe me, it is at risk-when will you implement recommendations of the Adams report? I'd ask you to get on with this job and stop the loss of volunteer firefighters in rural Ontario. They're very important to our small communities, and I'd really appreciate a quick response to this.

Hon Mr Kwinter: There is common consensus that the Adams report was not acceptable and not the basis for any sort of resolution. As a result of that, I have decided that if we can get the parties together and give them some ground rules and some parameters so that they know what we're trying to accomplish, we can get them back to the table. Everybody has acknowledged that if we can get a mediated solution, that's the way to go; if we can't, then we will bring in legislation.