Thank you, Mr. Chair, and again it's good to see you back in person. It's always good to get together in committee.
I want to especially thank you, Auditor General, especially as it's the first time I've had a chance to talk to you since another report, called “Arctic Water Surveillance”. It was an excellent report. It addresses many areas that lack attention by this government for the entire Arctic community in which many first nations communities reside. I just want to thank you for that work.
Let's get into this report and some questions that you brought up, and I thank you for doing so. I represent many first nations communities in my home riding, such as Doig, Blueberry, Halfway, Moberly and many others.
On page three of the report, it says:
We found that the department’s actions were more reactive than preventative, despite First Nations communities identifying many infrastructure projects to mitigate the impact of emergencies.
We had a devastating windstorm last year that went through Doig and Blueberry. There was almost zero immediate response to what happened there. There are many trees that are still down, which brings up concerns of wildfires in the future.
It continues:
The department had a backlog of 112 of these infrastructure projects that it had determined were eligible but that it had not funded.
Can you give us some examples of what those 112 look like? Maybe list one or two examples of what one of those projects would have looked like that would have been preventative, that would have been much better suited to preventing the disaster as opposed to responding to the emergency.