Thank you, Minister.
Of course, indigenous people across Canada are on the front lines of climate change very often, and they rely upon the federal government to help them, as do all other communities and so on in terms of the mitigation of natural disasters.
I received some numbers that were shared by my colleague, MP Ashton, on an order paper question. Since the Liberals have come into government, $388.3 million has been given to first nations communities to help with “natural disaster mitigation and prevention efforts”. At the same time, $788.7 million has been spent to evacuate first nations and respond to emergency events.
Now, one would assume that we should be spending more on prevention than we are in terms of evacuation. Certainly, a lot of indigenous nations, first nations, are looking for that support and are begging, actually, for that help, in order to get to that level of preparedness.
We've had many conversations in this committee about potential cuts that are coming forward. The AFN estimates that it will take $350 billion for the federal government to meet its promise and responsibility to close by 2030 the infrastructure gap that is being seen by first nations.
The question here is, because of that concern, because of those potential cuts, can we hear from you today that promise and that clear commitment that funding will increase for first nations leaders across the country, and that no funding will be cut from disaster mitigation efforts, especially in northern, rural and remote communities?