Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know this question was raised earlier on this page, but in regard to emergency management and response for territorial and community emergency
management and planning, including search and rescue, again, I think a lot of communities who have had situations using Aklavik, for instance, with their floods and whatnot, every time there’s a flood they pull together and they respond to emergency measures. There’s recommendations made so that you can learn from those experiences, but more importantly, that you find ways to not only prepare for those types of situations but that you enact an emergency plan when you have an emergency. Again, that takes resources, that takes money, and I think that we have to do a better job of not only ensuring that those plans are drafted in such a way but also having the capacity to implement those plans and ensuring that they have the resources and the ability to carry out those emergency plans and implement them.
I’d like to know exactly what are we doing to ensure that the emergency management plans are not only prepared, but do we have the capacity to implement those plans when we have a fire or have a major flood in a community so that we’re not in a situation that we’re being reactive, but ensuring that we’re proactive and we’re able to respond to these things and prepare for them ahead of time knowing that we will follow the plans when they’re here. I know in the case of Aklavik, we’ve gone through few floods over the years, but we have learned from a lot of that. Again, there have been a lot of recommendations that have come out of that after the fact in regards to implementing measures so that there’s a way that we can prevent.
One of the things that they’re doing in the community of Aklavik is in regard to drainage systems, looking at the right drainage and more importantly protecting government assets at airports and community facilities. That takes money and that takes planning. You’ve got to build that into your community plans.
So what are we doing to ensure that we’ve not only developed these plans, but implement them at the same time?