I thank the member for the question. I think it's an important question. It's a conversation we've been having in Alberta for quite a long time. As you know, we had the Slave Lake fire. We had the Fort McMurray fire, and we've now had the Jasper fire. We've had substantial weather events, and we've also seen that in our agriculture industry, where we've had severe drought and it impacted our agriculture producers. It is a real live conversation that climate change is real. We are having severe climate events, and as policy-makers, we need to do better at how we're preparing and responding.
In Jasper specifically, we did need to prepare better in regard to ensuring that we had more wildland firefighters hired, trained and prepared for this year's season. We had asked for that, I would say, at least six months prior to the season starting. Even when the season was ending, we were asking that we be ready for the next year's season. We need to create a joint training program between the federal government and the provincial governments to ensure that all wildland and structural firefighters are trained to the same level, that they're able to respond and that they're able to prepare.
We also need to be looking at our forest health and what is going on within our forested area. That would include looking at sustainable forestry practices and how we look at the boreal forest, which we know is known to burn because that's how it rejuvenates itself. We have to look at forestry practices. We have to look at working at government perspectives and levels of being able to ensure that we're doing things like building fireguards, that we are fire-smarting homes, that we're ensuring that people are aware and able to have the financial means to fire-smart, but we're also working with industry to help protect those areas.