Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to preface my comments by saying that one of the reasons I brought this study forward was to in fact create that action that Grand Chief Fox spoke about. With that said, what we as a committee need is for a report to go to the House, to the minister, for a reaction, and therefore to create that action.
I'm going to make a statement and I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to make the statement because I need it on the record and I need the analysts to include it in their final report. When it comes to emergency preparedness, it's been mentioned in past meetings that, one, to move forward, a team has to be established within your community. That team has to embark upon making an emergency preparedness plan. As part of that, infrastructure capacities have to be recognized and identified. The infrastructure supports needed during emergencies have to be identified, hopefully in advance but sometimes that doesn't happen until the actual emergency happens, understandably. Advanced ancillary services have to be identified, such as your haz-mat, your PPE, as was mentioned, mutual aid with neighbouring communities if there are neighbouring communities, and other services that might be available to you, along with communications within your team and of course outside. Lots of times when an emergency happens, the community doesn't get prompted. If it's a water situation, for example, what prompts the community to actually recognize that there's an emergency? What opportunities and what infrastructure can you have in place to prompt the community? There could be an air raid siren, for example, and then when people hear that they would go to a certain radio station, with a battery-powered radio, of course. That would then prompt them to do what needs to be done.
With all that said, and with respect to the investments that have to be made, one, there is the community's strategic plan. That leverages not only emergency preparedness and ongoing infrastructure updates to emergency services to prepare for those situations, but also the investments for overall infrastructure capacities, even during times when there's no emergency. Those can include fibre, water and waste water, asset management declarations, habitat and community restoration after the fact, indigenous procurement, governance priorities and, of course, communication between ministries.
With all that said, I have two questions. Do you agree with that premise? That's so the analysts can include that on the record. Second, do you have any further comments on that?