Thank you once again for your question.
I have to tell you, sir, I'm very proud of our response to that, as I am every time we respond to support Canadians. I've said it before and I'll say it again: All members of the armed forces love to support Canadians first. It's a real point of pride, when Canadians are in trouble and we are asked to support, that we can be there.
We've learned a lot over the years about how to make that faster, so we have good liaison—in this case with the Government of Quebec—and excellent work through the government operations centre, where, from the provincial level down through the ministerial level and to orders to me to act—because I cannot act in Canada without a request—and in support of other government departments, we responded.
In this case, it was with Hercules and troops to support not only the movement of Hydro-Québec and other workers onto the island, but also, which was important, to do a welfare check of individuals to support the police, not in a law enforcement role but just to make sure that everybody was okay. The time from when we were requested to think about this until we left and started doing the job was, I think, 24 hours or less.
I would say that the impact of such things as climate change or the advent of natural disasters has certainly made it clear to me.... You asked me about how we are prepared to respond. We maintain force structure. We maintain a part of the armed forces at readiness, and in some cases quite high readiness, to be able to respond to Canadians in need. We have now a process whereby we anticipate fire season, flood season and increases in the requirement for search and rescue response, depending on when people will be out on the water and land. We are then poised to respond more quickly.
It has, though, become not a case of the odd occurrence. It's now almost routine. We have, I think, for the last three years, deployed to support provinces in firefighting and managing floods. It's now becoming a routine occurrence, which it had not been in the past. We take that into consideration in terms of the force structure and employment of the reserves. I've given direction to look at developing ways to make the reserves far more capable and ready, in terms of initial response, because they are present there.