These are always provincial requests, so they are responsible. The provinces have a big role in this. A lot of what they focus on now is management, which is about the coordination of existing resources, and not so much about developing and building services themselves. That's where we're getting this kind of skip at the local end, and then we have the federal and provincial ends—it depends on different provinces.
There is a bit of a gap there, and some of it has been a function of the increasing reliance on being able to draw on the CAF and other federal resources. Sometimes the provinces pay those back, but again, sometimes they won't have to. The CAF isn't going to go around asking for money from provinces. I think that's a big problem.
There are two things. One, do we just need better coordination with the mechanisms to be able to find the capabilities to bring them together, or do we have to actually build capabilities at all levels with a bit more specialization? I think that's where we're really needed. Two, the coordination piece is super important, but when you get something like the pandemic on top of regular national disasters, there's a stress function that happens, and everyone is asking for help and support.
The trajectory of climate change is that places we didn't think were going to have climate change issues have climate change issues—in communities and things. I think that the B.C. floods completely took the provincial government by surprise. They couldn't believe it. They were basically saying that these were municipal level issues and they should coordinate, but it was clear after one or two days that this was a regional disaster and it needed major capabilities and coordination at all levels.
It's not just about the coordination piece, it's about building up...and specialization. Unfortunately, the CAF is being asked to do a lot of giving of the capability part and relieving some of the provincial responsibilities.