Thank you, Chair. My first question is going to be for Mr. Ness.
I was really happy to hear you talking about proactive investment. We can look to the Sumas floods. We had a billion dollars of damage when the dikes didn't survive, and that was predicted.
I have a unique problem in my riding as well. The Columbia River basin supports over 600 hydroelectric dams. Part of the dam system goes down into the United States and comes back up into Canada. Where it comes back into Canada is the Kootenay River system, and the Kootenay River dikes are failing. We know that. We're predicting it, yet it's really hard to get the federal government to look at proactive investment. We are always reacting, and it costs us significantly more money.
I'm wondering if you can give me an example of how we can stress the importance of proactive investment over reactive investment.