I served for several years on the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, and I'm very much impressed by their model and by their work. One of the things I really like about their model is that it's self-financing.
For most of these things that are being suggested, there's a nice start and you fund them up front, and then they die over the years. These conservation authorities have lasted for 70 years, mostly because they're self-financing. They are financed through a per capita levy on municipalities. They've been around for 70 years and are still very healthy. My authority, for example, has a budget of $10 million or something. As a citizen, I probably pay $10 a year to support that. It's very good value. They do very good work in a lot of areas. There are very good examples that could be....
On the question of flooding, I think I will add just a bit on that. After the flood in B.C., FLOW, together with a recently retired bureaucrat from the B.C. government, did a detailed policy analysis of the flooding and what could be done about it in the future. I just offer that up. I will send that to the secretariat at some point. It may be useful for you.
Another general point, while I have the floor here, is that I've been listening to some of your seminars. They're very useful and for very good reasons. It's obvious that all politics are local: You're getting a lot of local questions and a lot of local advice. You're not getting much advice on national policy—very little substantive advice on national policy. I'll just put out an offer for the analysts for when they're doing their work. If they have any questions about national policy, please feel free to direct them to us. We will be very happy to help you with those.