There are many reasons for it, but one obvious one is the impact of a destabilized climate and the greater risk of natural disasters because of more frequent, more violent, and more consequential weather events, the floods, droughts, and the other types of problems that have befallen Canadians, and cost municipalities, the private sector, and individual Canadians literally tens of millions and billions of dollars. I think of the flood in southern Alberta a few years ago. In southern Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba, in two out of the last five years, there have been major floods. There was the flooding in Quebec three years ago, I believe.
The parliamentary budget officer has added up the consequences of all of this and taking predictable factors into account, the officer has tried to project what we can expect in terms of cost. He is saying that typically what we budgeted in the past will simply not be adequate to deal with the consequences in the future. There are two things about that. No doubt in future estimates we will need to make more cautious preparations for what the real dollar costs are going to be, but we also need to invest in prevention. There you will see something from our campaign platform that I think is very encouraging. In the streams of infrastructure investment that we intend to make in the future, there is specific reference to building resilience against the consequences of climate change. How do we better prepare for floods? How do we better manage those unpredictable water flows? What kind of infrastructure can we invest in that will make us better able to handle the disasters when they occur and avoid the downstream costs as much as possible?