Thank you.
I think we make investments in a number of different areas. We try to coordinate these very much with the provinces and territories through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, so that we can align capacity where it's most needed across the country. We have approximately 300 wildfire-related staff, who are either frontline crews or incident management specialists. They work across the country to prepare for and respond to wildfires.
We have resource-sharing agreements with provinces and territories, so that we can move personnel back and forth as needed. For example, if they need a little extra capacity on the ground in B.C., we can share our staff with them and vice versa.
We are also working actively with communities to reduce the risk of wildfire. Obviously, with climate change, we are seeing more intense wildfire seasons, and we're paying close attention to that risk. We are working on using prescribed fire, forest thinning, vegetation management and community fire guards to reduce the risk to valued assets and communities.
In the past year, we conducted 44 vegetation management initiatives at 20 parks to create guards and buffers around communities in wildfire-prone areas. Last year, we treated about 2,000 hectares with prescribed fire to reduce risk, and that was on top of about 1,000 hectares the year before.
All that is to say that there's a lot of work going on, from prevention and risk reduction to being ready to respond and the actual response.