Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister. We are happy to be hearing from you today. I hope your health will improve over the coming weeks.
In your opening remarks, you said that adapting to climate change was important for you and that you have made investments for that purpose. Of course, those initiatives are quite commendable and necessary. However, I have noted that those investments were used mostly in situations where there was some sort of extreme pressure on infrastructure or during climate disasters.
You said you represent a predominantly rural riding. My riding also has largely rural parts that are also affected by climate change, but not of the natural disaster variety.
I will talk to you about a specific case involving ferries. At certain locations on the Richelieu River, where there were ferry crossings in the summer, there were ice bridges in the winter. Management of those ice bridges has become impossible, so people can no longer cross the river to get to the other shore in winter.
I searched through programs available at Infrastructure Canada, at Transport Canada and at other departments, but I have not managed to find a fund that would be used to remedy those kinds of issues.
Is your government interested in those types of situations and could there be relevant initiatives in the future?