Thank you especially for emphasizing the importance of water infrastructure.
People get thirsty fast if water infrastructure is attacked. Scholars in the United States last year, in order to assess the threat to water and waste water infrastructure in the cyber realm, built an imaginary website, loaded it up on the Web, and provided a website and an entry into an imaginary municipal water system just to see whether it would attract cyber-attacks on the industrial control systems that govern the municipal water system here in Ottawa, back in Washington, and across our two nations. That website attracted hundreds of attacks immediately.
Water infrastructure, and waste water infrastructure, are absolutely vital to strengthen in terms of resilience because of our dependence on water. This goes not only to direct attacks on the infrastructure, but the indirect effects, because certainly in Washington, D.C., perhaps also here in Ottawa, that water system is utterly dependent on electricity in order to function and in order to pump the water. With no electricity, no water for drinking, no water for firefighting, everything else is in jeopardy.
In regard to your second point in terms of aging infrastructure and how we can build resilience against non-traditional threats, this is why it's so important at the federal level and at the provincial level to have a dialogue on how investments should go forward against these non-traditional hazards. Ratepayers and customers are ultimately going to get stuck with the bill. What kinds of investments are prudent? What kinds of investments are important from a national security perspective for Canada and the United States? Who ought to pay and where should those investments be targeted going forward? That is a critical opportunity for progress in Canada and in the United States.