I would love to see the government's analysis.
In 2023, 18.5 million hectares of forest burned in wildfires across Canada. That is astronomical and unprecedented, more than double the area in the last worst wildfire season.
Without counting the health costs and the costs of damages on private property, there was a report saying that it cost about a billion dollars. While $35 million sounds like a lot, it may not be enough to tackle this huge issue that Canadians are facing. People are being evacuated from their homes. We are seeing kids choking on smoke.
One of the proposals that we put forward is a national firefighting force, a force that could respond to wildfires. We know that fighting forest fires is a provincial responsibility, but crews get quickly overwhelmed when we have unprecedented fires, and we are going to see more and more unprecedented wildfire seasons. They could also work year-round thinning forests and doing the kind of management that will hopefully prevent some of the catastrophic impacts.
I'm curious about where your government is on this proposal.