Sure. That sounds good.
I came from the municipality of Pickering, where I was a councillor for seven years, and also from the region of Durham.
In the region of Durham, we have two large nuclear facilities, and we ran a lot of emergency preparedness drills around them. And when we had local emergencies, we ran local operations centres and saw firsthand how effectively they worked on the ground.
I understood very clearly, at that point in time, the relationship that existed between municipalities and the provinces in developing those plans. And I well understand the need for the federal government to monitor the level of preparedness of provinces and municipalities for potential emergencies, to ensure that they're properly resourced, and to understand where they are going to be.
But where are we heading? I just say that in this context. If we have three levels of government, at a certain point, if the federal government takes too much of a lead, do we risk becoming too involved and therefore actually slow down the response process?
How do we ensure, in the municipalities, in particular, which are the first responders and the ones closest to the ground in understanding the situation, that we don't move to a situation where, in trying to be helpful from a federal context, we create problems for them in terms of their response time, because we start creating an overly bureaucratic situation?