Thank you.
Minister, thank you for being here again today.
In your opening remarks, you mentioned the flooding. Certainly Canadians have been gripped by that over the last few weeks and the resulting loss of life and property damage that has been incurred.
I want to thank you for your leadership on it, and also the fast response from your department, the military, the other federal departments, scores of provincial and local public servants, first responders, and volunteers. It has really been quite extraordinary. I was just reading an article in our local paper about flooding being the leading cause of public emergency in Ontario. It is a shared responsibility in Ontario between the conservation authorities—which, in my case, is Conservation Halton—the province, and the federal government.
You mentioned in your remarks a whole-of-society response. That's something I have certainly been approached about as well, that it's not just a whole-of-government approach but a whole-of-society approach. I know there were measures introduced in the last budget having to do with funding for disaster mitigation infrastructure and implementation of new building codes, as two examples.
Could you perhaps outline the strategy and comment on how it could be put in place to better prepare us, given that in this time of climate change we'll likely be facing this more and more often?