Mr. Chair, part of the $300,000 would be to work with the communities, as we were saying before, in their training. The Member used Aklavik as an example and it’s actually a very good example, because having been in Aklavik for a few of the floods that happened there, I got to see firsthand the local emergency planning group in action. They get together, they have a plan and when emergencies such as this happen, they put the plan into action. They do it with whatever folks they have in the community, they do it with their own resources and a lot of it volunteer. It’s a working committee that has housing a part of it, the hamlet is a part of it, the band could be part of it. So we see firsthand the
response to some of the communities and we see our role in it with the $300,000 is to help with the training for fire and emergency.
I kept referring to fire before, but it’s fire and emergency training and we’d be able to do some training with them, but knowing a lot of the communities across the Northwest Territories and their ability to respond to crisis and a lot of them have their own little emergency preparedness committees and they’re very well aware of the situations that they face in their particular community and we see our role in supporting them in some of the mitigating measure they have to take. I think we’ve seen that with the drainage system, as the Member pointed out, and after the last flood there was the whole redoing of all the roads, which should help and I think the drainage will help a lot. We will never be able to predict the floods, especially in a community like Aklavik where it’s very unpredictable. It doesn’t matter with all the measures you take to try to prevent it, the fact is, Aklavik floods regularly, almost 10 years to the day and it’s an historical fact.
So I think we see our role as supporting the community and the community takes the initiative and they do a very good job at it. Thank you.