Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for bringing this bill forward. Speaking as a representative of Manitoba, we have been prone to floods for centuries, but they're getting worse of late, thanks to some of our neighbours and some land use changes in particular. I recently had the chance to speak with Manitoba's hydrological forecast centre to get a bit of a better understanding of how we could benefit from a national forecasting service, because obviously we have a desire to control our water flows and to retain water and mitigate floods. I'm not saying there were any concerns from that conversation, but I'm hoping for some points of clarity.
I'll start with the sponsor, but perhaps Mr. Pomeroy can aid in some of the responses.
One of my concerns is that if we have a federal service, there may be confusion with what comes out of the province. Particularly in Manitoba, as a leader in this space, we rely on those flood forecasts. Would there be two streams of information, or would it be a national, federal organization sharing with the province for them to distribute the flood forecasting? The concern would be that if you have two different sets of forecast information, it might not align, which would lead to some of the challenges you've alluded to already.