I appreciate that you've laid out the business case for government investment and leadership in this area more eloquently than I could. As a leader who has held previous roles prior to joining this table or the House, you would know well that it's smaller municipalities and local leaders who are often on the front lines of this issue. They're closest to their constituents. They are the ones who see at a ground level the impacts on families, often people they know, members of their community and their neighbours. It's also these same communities where leaders have the fewest resources; the infrastructure simply isn't there.
Canada is fortunate, in my view, in that we have had such strong ambassadorship and local leadership from municipalities. Part of the reason is that they are on the front lines of this issue and they're hearing it from their residents. You've laid out a clear business case for the need for a coordinated national response.
In my view, there are areas of this that do not need to be overorchestrated. What we're seeing, at least in the insurance sector—and these are very early days, because the nature of the threat is evolving so quickly—is climate resilience or severe weather resilience also emerging as a bit of a competitive space within the insurance industry. This is very positive, and there's opportunity here for real innovation.
A government could, for example, create something of an innovation fund that might incentivize insurers to put in more of their own money, provided there was some government partnership. In this sense, perhaps there are opportunities to leverage private-public opportunities without the need for the level of coordination that you've rightly described to truly have a coordinated national response.
However, that is a very steep hill to climb. We must do that work, but where are the opportunities along the way? We need those, too. The experiences from this past summer and recent years show us that the time for action and mitigation is clearly now. Canadians need it.