The parliamentary budget officer certainly believes it will be more and more often. He issued a report about a year ago that made two points. He thought we were provisioning too little for the accelerating damages that are likely to accrue, and he also thought it would be wise to invest upstream before the fact in the kinds of things that could mitigate damages and save money, after the fact, if damages were in fact avoided. I think that's good advice. That is one thing that is very clearly on the agenda for federal, provincial, and territorial ministers to discuss at the end of this month. That discussion really has already begun in a number of ways.
There have been some programs over the course of the last number of years to try to encourage investments up front. The uptake on those programs has not been particularly encouraging, so we'll be looking at why, with available investment funds, there hasn't been more focus on prevention and mitigation. But the important news coming out of the budget was the creation of a stream of funding for public infrastructure that is in the broad category of green infrastructure, and a portion of that is dedicated for disaster mitigation and dealing with the consequences of climate change, in the order of $2.5 billion over the next four or five years.
These measures obviously have to be undertaken in partnership with provinces and with municipalities and a number of other authorities, but I think this provides the country with a really significant opportunity not only to have the investment impact that can help to expand the economy and create jobs, but also to make our country in many ways more resilient to the recurring problems that flow from climate change. If you just think of the examples recently, we have the floods right now in at least four provinces. We had last winter the ice storm that particularly affected New Brunswick, and last fall, the flood in Cape Breton. Before that, of course, just about a year ago now, we had the worst wildfire disaster in Canadian history at Fort McMurray. The year before that, it was a very serious wildfire requiring the evacuation of several thousand people from northern Saskatchewan. Before that, there were two out of the last five years of successive floods across the southern prairies that damaged southeastern Saskatchewan and wreaked havoc in cities like Brandon, Manitoba, and before that, we had the worst flooding disaster in Canadian history, which was around Calgary and High River, and the toll taken there.
You see that pattern all over the last five or six years. I think it lends credence to what the parliamentary budget officer is saying. It's a serious problem. It's accelerating. It's going to get worse and more costly, and we can save money from cleaning up the damages after the fact if we invest smartly before the fact in the kinds of structures and infrastructure design and engineering that will mitigate the consequences of climate change before they happen.