Yes, I appreciate that.
First of all, we have to appreciate where these fires occur, because most of these fires and most of the areas burned are caused by lightning, and much of it occurs in remote areas where we do not have the kind of infrastructure that is required to suppress forest fires effectively.
Secondly, if you go to southern California and witness what happened in recent days there, you see that even where you have high population density, road infrastructure, airports and all the fire suppression technology in the world, we're still facing situations where forest fires simply cannot be suppressed because of the intensity of the energy that is being released in these forest fires.
I'm the carbon guy. I'm not the fire expert, but what my fire experts say is that what has happened in recent years is that the conditions in the climate situation have increased the intensity of forest fires to the point that the fire suppression efforts are increasingly overwhelmed. It is, I would argue, not possible to increase the resources to the point that all forest fires can be suppressed. I should emphasize that British Columbia, for example, in the last four years has spent about $1.6 billion in fire suppression efforts. That is just at the provincial level. The numbers across the country are, again, in the range of $700 million or $800 million per year and probably more in some.
The big question, therefore, is this. Do we need to change our strategy as we face climate change impacts to start managing our forests in such a way as to reduce the risk of future fires rather than trying to spend more money on suppressing fires when they occur?