I sit on the public accounts committee. I've seen your references. You speak of a report we had: “Report 5—Socio-economic Gaps on First Nations Reserves”. When we did that study, of course—and to the benefit of my colleagues here, I hope—we actually were able to determine that there was a funding gap.
I know that your report suggests that there were funding increases, but not all funding increases are particular to the issues that are pertaining to indigenous people. One of those, for example, and something that's a big issue in my province of Alberta, is forest fires. We studied the first nations emergency management, for example, which is governed by ISC. We brought in the deputy minister.
We talked to many of those folks. We asked them clearly important questions about why it is that the government had only assigned $12 million, for example, to natural disaster prevention across the entire country. It was just $12 million. When I asked the deputy minister how much it was going to cost to actually see this level of preparedness, she reluctantly admitted that it was in the mark of $360 million to $500 million.
We do see, of course, that the amount of money here is increasing in these total portfolios, but is it being targeted in the most appropriate way, the way that would actually see the kinds of programs that would ensure the longer issues that can be stopped, for example, can stop today? Did you go through, for example, the department's planning on individual issues?