I'm happy to go over that.
As I said, if emergencies happen and they impact the local level initially.... Think of the thunderstorm event in Ottawa a few months ago. In that case, the province did not seek federal support and did not ask to deploy the army. Ottawa managed that. It was mainly a hydro and infrastructure impact, and they managed it. Many events occur across Canada all the time that you may not be aware of. They occur locally, regionally and are handled.
If events begin to overwhelm a region or province, then conversations will begin between the emergency management teams in a province and locally. They may engage the government operations centre. We have regional offices across the country. They have very strong relationships with the emergency management operation centres in each province and territory. If something is overwhelming, say in the case of the atmospheric river last fall, there was an immediate response from the CAF for search and rescue and evacuating people from highways. Then there were additional conversations that were engaged with our team. We work with the province and its emergency management centre to deploy federal supports.
Of course, once the critical response crisis phase is over, there are a number of very strategic conversations that go on around disaster support and financing. You'll recall the ministerial working group on B.C. I'm sure folks have discussed that as well. Mainly there are conversations if the province feels that a region is overwhelmed. If something is of significant impact to the province, they'll engage our team and we will work with them to understand their needs.
As I said, in terms of the criteria of capabilities that are required, we'll understand whether the federal government has those capabilities, whether the provincial and regional assets have been leveraged and exhausted, and what private sector and public sector assets are available. That can all go on in a matter of hours or days leading up to a formal request for federal assistance.