Mr. Chair, through you to Ms. Ashton, thank you for the questions. I say questions—plural—because our colleague touched on probably half a dozen different elements in her question.
It won't surprise you, Mr. Chair, that I don't share her view that the government hasn't done anything to get ahead of these extreme weather events and the challenges they represent for infrastructure across the country. She properly identified some of the devastating circumstances in British Columbia, like the atmospheric river event and the fires in Lytton. I was in her province of Manitoba a few weeks ago. I saw the flooding and the circumstances of the flooding in some parts of southern Manitoba.
All across the country we have examples, like the highways that are cut off in Mr. Rogers' province of Newfoundland and Labrador because of washouts on the Trans-Canada Highway. Right across the country, very expensive and very dangerous events are taking place that cause considerable damage to infrastructure and obviously represent a considerable risk to human safety as well.
I don't think that the Infrastructure Bank should be the first and only place that we would go to do this important work with provinces and territories. As our colleague will know, in 2018 the government committed $3.4 billion to a disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. This isn't an Infrastructure Bank program, which is a loan. This is actual federal money made available to help communities remain resilient in the face of natural disasters. To date, $2.1 billion of funding has been put out to 70 projects across the country to mitigate the threats of natural disasters, floods, wildfires and droughts.
I think the Canada Infrastructure Bank should and can play a supporting role in some of these projects. For example, in some of the irrigation projects on the Prairies, perhaps some water management projects—