Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just following up on my honourable colleague's questioning with respect to emergency preparedness, I had a public meeting in Fort Simpson a couple of weeks ago and this very topic came up. At one time, our government used to provide emergency preparedness supplies, like emergency blankets, emergency stretchers, blankets, some equipment, some supplies, all stored...Well, particularly in Fort Simpson it was stored at the airport. Just over time, the time expired so a lot of the blankets are not good anymore. The medicines weren't good. The stretchers are...(inaudible)...they're sort of failing because of age. But it was noted that this emergency equipment was never replaced. So there's one fellow in Simpson, he was saying look, if, indeed, there is some kind of event or some kind of emergency, Simpson is prone to flooding, as well if there's some type of emergency that people have to leave the island rather suddenly, he's saying that the supplies that are available won't take care of the people. Like any other emergency, even a huge multi-casualty event of some type, there won't be enough blankets, or stretchers, or equipment to be there.
The other part of the emergency preparedness was that when that equipment was available, the government was pleased to provide heated storage at the airport, as well as this is where the generator of the Fort Simpson Airport was talked about through the Minister's other hat, through Transportation. It was a big issue for Fort Simpson. It was a $1000 line item to the department, but it created lots of headaches in that the only source and supply of electricity is on the island. So if an event happened on the island, then residents will be left in the dark.
Mr. Minister mentioned that we do have a territorial emergency coordinator. But what specifically does our department do to help fund any emergency preparedness in terms of supplies and equipment and even for storage in our different regions?