I echo the devastation of the wildfires. As you know, a number of lives were lost last year as well in the firefighter ranks. We were working directly with the B.C. Wildfire Service at the time and felt very deeply the loss of their members. That happened last summer. It's become very much an emotional topic for us at our institution, so thank you for that.
As far as our development of the Institute for Wildfire Science, Adaptation and Resiliency goes, our scientific director is Dr. Mike Flannigan. He is globally known for his expertise in wildfire research, and he is incredibly well connected with other researchers provincially, nationally and globally. While having him and the other researchers do that work and connect with other researchers, our role is to provide the assistance and support to have the researchers do the fantastic work they do and to invite other institutions and other researchers to become part of the institute.
Another big piece for us is the creation of a wildfire training and education centre, which we think is a first in the ecosystem. We are not aware of any other systems where training, education, research and innovation are coming together under one roof to do these things collectively with all of the people engaged.
The idea of that is having research-informed training and education, building that research and then informing the things that are happening on the ground. We are not interested in doing that only regionally. We really would like to see both the institute and the centre become a provincial source and absolutely a national source.
We are actively seeking any kind of collaboration that anybody would like to have with us. We are trying our very best to work with other post-secondary institutions across our province and across our nation.