Environment committee  Yes, of course, we are because insurance issues are widespread. The other thing is from a global perspective, in that there are many parts of the world that are being dramatically affected by extreme weather events for which insurance has never been available. Poor countries have to rely on their own governments to be able to help people as emergency crises pummel them one after another.

Environment committee  Okay. I think that's been well brought up. What happens is that we know what the costs are of damage. If we calculated the cost of producing a strategy or an action on this, I'm sure the answer would be a fraction of those costs.

Environment committee  First of all, I think it's important to recognize that agriculture is your baseline economic sector that we're talking about here. If agriculture has serious difficulties in productivity, and great costs and damage, etc., it will work its way up the entire economic ladder throughout the whole country.

Environment committee  First of all, I thank you for that very, very important question and observation. We are only beginning to see just what those costs might look like. We first have to determine exactly what kinds of impacts we're talking about. When climate change migrations become a crisis of national security, the costs can be quite dramatic in terms of the loss of GDP, productivity, stability, public health costs, security costs and so on.

Environment committee  Please allow me to begin by extending the very best wishes of the United Nations to all. I would like, in the time that I have, to put the question of whether Canada needs a national flood and drought prediction strategy into a global context. On the global scale, because we waited so long to act on the threat, climate heating has gotten away from us.