A quick look at the sports culture in the U.S. and Canada:

Baseball – played on a field featuring a mound of dirt;

NASCAR – races are run on tracks with steep banks;

Football – the field is slightly crowned to allow drainage;

Golf – don’t we all wish that the greens were perfectly flat?

Soccer – see football, above.

Now, if you will forgive me for that intro, I will draw a contrast between our respective sporting and fire-service cultures. The news from our neighbours to the south this week included the vice president, the speaker of the House and several other prominent Democrats speaking at the IAFF legislative conference in Washington. Partly a biennial payback for support from IAFF locals and partly a statement of intent on how the new administration plans to fund fire service initiatives, these speeches highlight one of the greatest inequities between our two countries. The American federal government maintains programs and agencies to encourage the development of safe and effective fire services across its territory.  The Canadian government does nothing to level the playing field among communities that can afford top-notch fire protection and those that cannot. The Americans have the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy, open to all and well funded. We have nothing at the federal level with which to even draw a comparison.

Let’s face it – we are not a priority right now. Even if we could ignore the facts that we are in a deep economic hole and in the middle of a war, fire protection is not and never has been near the top of the legislative agenda. Stephane Dion (remember him?) made a promise that a Liberal government would go ahead with the creation of a National Fire Advisor’s office, but he could have promised a Beatles reunion for all the good it would have done him at the polls. And all the while, about 35 per cent more Canadians each year die by fire than by firearms, not including suicides (using figures from Statistics Canada). Fire kills 30 Canadians for every one who dies in an avalanche, but which got more attention in the last year?

So here is your turn to talk; what are we not doing to get the attention of our government, our media and the people we protect? What can we do to level the playing field? We need to get in the corners and fight for the puck. We need to hurry – hard!

And since this is March, let’s not forget that the other big American sport – basketball - also makes use of a level playing field. After all, it was invented by a Canadian!