Thank you, Chair.
Minister, a couple of things are striking to me about the conversation so far. One, hearing you talk, it sounds as though the government that has, in fact, been in place for eight years hasn't, in fact, been in place, because you are continually talking about all of us sharing some responsibility and how we're all accountable for this, as members of Parliament.
Your government has been in place for eight years. We had an audit in 2013 that identified many of these same problems. Your government has had eight years to try to address or fix those problems, and you're coming to us saying that you're an ally, that you're angry too and that you're supportive.
These are problems that you as minister are responsible for. You should be taking action on them, and action should have been taken long ago.
The other thing that's striking to me in this discussion is that we have a government now that always wants to measure its success by the amount of money it's spending. The Auditor General has found that if we were spending money proactively on emergency preparedness, we would actually be saving money on emergency response, and in fact, saving money overall. That is, spending money quite literally on preventing fires instead of putting out fires would save us money and reduce the negative impacts on communities. This notion underlines the problem that it's not just about money spent; it's also about management and about being proactive. Those are my comments.
Minister, I want to ask you specifically about page 14 of the audit. The Auditor General highlights the absence of service agreements in a number of cases. Clearly, given the interaction of federal and provincial responsibility when it comes to responding to these kinds of issues on indigenous communities, the federal government has a responsibility, but it will obviously likely need to benefit from co-operation with provinces.
In fact, in a number of provinces there are no service agreements in place to deal with emergency management in general or with wildfires. In one case the agreement was signed over 30 years ago and has not been updated. In four of six wildfire agreements, not all first nations communities in the relevant provinces are included.
Minister, you've said that you accept the findings of the Auditor General's report. Is your department proactively working to update and negotiate agreements, and could you give us an update on when we can expect to have agreements covering every province and territory and agreements that include all first nations communities?