I can do better on the first than on the second.
The reality is that the CAF is spending more of its time dealing with floods, fires, ice storms and pandemics because climate change is making a dent on our climate. There are no two ways around it. It means that the CAF has less money, less time and fewer resources to deal with other problems. There's just the time thing about it; it interrupts training cycles and it interrupts other things. The CAF is strained. The pandemic has strained the CAF more through the variety of ways in which it has helped the country deal with the pandemic. That simply makes it harder to do so.
There are others who could talk more clearly about what it means for the permafrost to be softening and how that will make it harder to maintain bases and develop new bases [Technical difficulty—Editor] up in the north, but every investment that we put in the north is going to be very, very costly. Climate change is not going to make it cheaper. It's going to make it more imperative, because we [Technical difficulty—Editor] to be rescued. We're going to need more assets up in the north, because it is going to be a passage that people will be going through.
What's the solution to this? I think the first thing is that we need to tell the military that domestic emergency operations are not just an inconvenience getting in the way of expeditionary operations. They are a co-priority with these operations elsewhere. Again, we've faced greater harm from these emergencies than from any foreign aggression in any recent time frame. We need to put more effort into making this part of their day job and not just something that gets in the way of their day job. It's about priorities.