Certainly our analysis is ongoing and regular in terms of petroleum markets and oil and gas markets in Canada, and we do that on a longitudinal basis, looking at trends over time as well as more accurate information.
In terms of our assessment as to what would trigger authorities under the Emergencies Act or the Energy Supplies Emergency Act, that is something that would be at the national scale. Part of that role is actually the department working with its provincial counterparts to establish whether it seemed to be, in a regional sense, an emergency and whether that would then constitute a national emergency from their perspective.
I can certainly speak to perhaps a few examples that are realistic. In the late 1990s there was an ice storm in eastern Ontario, upstate New York, and much of the eastern townships in Quebec, as well as the Island of Montreal. That ice storm crippled transportation of goods and services and activities going on for a number of weeks on end. I think the military was mobilized for a period of weeks, with thousands of Canadian soldiers helping facilitate in terms of what was going on with the landscape. Neither did that particular disaster or emergency trigger the particular acts under our authority.
The Saguenay floods that occurred in early 2000 in the Quebec region, which would also constitute a quite severe economic and environmental situation, did not constitute a national emergency.
What would trigger the department's action under the two acts is a fairly high threshold, I would say, in terms of what would meet the standard. Certainly there are a number of events that occurred in the last couple of decades that have been quite significant on Canadians and the Canadian economy, none of which has triggered the act.