Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of Wawanesa Insurance to join this important conversation.
Wawanesa is a national insurer. We insure just under two million Canadians across Canada. We are a mutual insurer, which means we're owned by the Canadians we are privileged to protect.
We've been in business for about 130 years. That is a very long time, but there is no precedent for what we're seeing now when it comes to the impacts of severe weather on the communities that we're fortunate to serve.
If you were in downtown Winnipeg this summer, where our headquarters are located, you would have had a front-row seat to something that was certainly unprecedented, at least in this part of Canada. Our headquarters are immediately adjacent to the Winnipeg convention centre, which was filled this summer not with conference delegates but with wildfire evacuees, as was the case with hotels across Winnipeg. It was a front-row seat to very significant human hardship and disruption, with people displaced from their communities.
We are doing our best as a mutual insurer—as other insurers are trying to do—to be part of the solution. In the past three years alone, we've committed over $5 million to people and organizations on the front line of climate change. This committee has heard about the gap when it comes to adaptation spending, and that's where we're directing a significant allocation of our funds.
However, we of course need a whole-of-society approach; the committee has heard that many times today, and there are many levers that only government can pull.
I'll share my time with my colleague, Mitch McEwen. I'm glad to take any questions.
Thank you.