Thank you.
Welcome, Chief. We're used to having chiefs here in front of this committee, but not your kind of chief.
Welcome, Ms. Saryeddine.
I worked for a few years in Norway House, which is a Cree community in northern Manitoba. I remember one particular fire there where three kids came in with either burns or smoke inhalation that required them to be on ventilators. I'm sure one of them has suffered his whole life because of facial burns.
As I recall, when I asked the community who got those kids out, they said it was community members. I'm sure they must have had some kind of fire department but they weren't the first responders there, so I know this is a really important issue.
Norway House is a bigger community. With 5,000 people, it's probably big enough to have permanent fire services, I'm guessing. A lot of the fly-in communities are small. They're 300 or 500 people and not only do they have inadequate fire services—Chief, you spoke a bit about it—but many of these communities are also subject to flooding at the same time.
How do we remedy this situation of small communities of, say, 300 people? They need to have people who can respond to health crises, to fires, to water, and there are only 400 people. You can't be an expert in everything.
Do you have any ideas as to the practicalities of how to be better at responding to emergencies?