Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  At a minimum, the communities must have good emergency plans. The community is in the best position to identify the risks it is exposed to. The community of Pelican Narrows you mentioned is exposed to fire risks, and no neighbouring communities can help. The community has to determine what resources it needs on the ground in order to be as autonomous as possible before asking for help.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I simply want to make sure I understood your question. What do you mean when you talk about the questions put to the communities?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Once again this varies from one province or territory to another.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The principle remains the same. The majority of operations centres follow the same procedure. When an event occurs, we examine it to see what lessons can be drawn from it. In addition, we usually invite affected partners to the table, or we consult them in another way in order to be able to take lessons learned into account.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In this area, lessons were learned. That said, every province or territory uses the method, the principle being to determine what was learned and to integrate it into the next cycle in order to see what can be done to solve the problem.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It is essential to establish a link with the affected community. Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada has a robust system, in that we have regional offices. People work with the province and with the first nations in order to make improvements. We have not reached perfection, far from it, but the purpose of that process is to improve.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Tanguy talked about funds to mitigate risks. Such sums are also available from Infrastructure Canada in Budget 2017. They total $2 billion, a considerable amount. We work with these people to determine what can be done for indigenous communities and how we can access more substantive amounts than the funding available from the department.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On your first two questions, that is not a level of detail that I have at my disposal. I trust that if I went to our regional offices, we could gather that information in terms of how often it is that we have first nations embedded in the operation centres, and when there are cultural exchanges, how often that occurs.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are three things happening in particular. One is regional meetings with the leadership of affected communities to gather lessons learned, what worked and what did not. Second, B.C. has hired someone, with INAC support, to meet with each of the communities individually to get that input and go in-depth so that we don't lose anything of what has worked well and what did not from the community's perspective.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  These are recent investments. In the last few years, we've been investing significantly in terms of mitigation and preparedness per se. That came out of an Auditor General report. They noted that we had spent $4 million over four years on mitigation, whereas the cost of our response and recovery was, at the time, on average, $30 million.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can get you the names.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The agreement was not sought by the individual first nations.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That one was an extension of an existing agreement. The consultation, per se, occurred at a high level between officials from the regional offices to leadership of Manitoba first nation representative organizations. It wasn't a first nation by first nation approach.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There is the Manitoba Interlake Tribal Council, for instance. I can give you the specifics.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If these are costs related to fighting fires in indigenous communities and they were incurred during the actual emergency event, they would be eligible under the emergency management assistance program of the department.