Correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the responsibility of the ministry is to have a plan in place, so that when the emergency happens, adequate resources are available to respond to that problem.
I will give you an example. I know of first nations that I was personally involved in, trying to help with some of these emergency mitigation measures. We were trying to deal with them. This was even around COVID. It's kind of out of the scope of this study. We were trying to get a response around different things and how to take care of the needs today.
There were a whole bunch of people who were navel-gazing, or looking at the sky without a response, while people's lives were literally at risk. There was a lack of response. I can tell you that approaching the ministers myself on other matters, they kind of threw their hands up, saying, “Well, you know, we don't know what we can do”, and these are the ministers.
If they can't respond to a crisis or an emergency on a reserve, or in a first nations community, who can? I guess I just throw that back to you. There are obviously structural issues and communication breakdowns between first nations and the ministers themselves.
How can we fix those breakdowns?