Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the second of several very costly events. We’ve still to deal with the third one, the Mackenzie River water levels and what that’s costing us. But this is the third event that is completely consistent and in line with the impacts and consequences of climate change. In the space of a few minutes here we’ve been discussing now $67,411 million. Sorry, it’s a little bit more than that. Twenty million, it’s actually more than $20 million. These are very serious numbers that we’ll be looking at today and in the future.
When we talk about a reduced cushion of $92 million in our borrowing limit and we are dealing with unexpected expenditures of 40, 20, 50 and 20, that’s something like $160 million or something like that and we are just over halfway through the year. We know we could be up against it here.
The perspective is, I think, times are changing. When we look at our fiscal strategy over the seven years that I have been a politician, having to bump up and continually request an increase in our borrowing limit and so on, this is of some concern. I don’t see us yet reacting with the insights that this is in fact a changed world and so that’s of even greater concern.
One question I have on this, and this is a reality. We needed to spend these monies so I’m not arguing with that, and I do appreciate all the work that our fighters did on the forest fire front. I guess I have two questions. Is this the end of it for our fire budget this year or can we expect more expenditures to be discussed? Secondly, no operation this size is done without any hitches, and I believe there were some hitches that need to be reviewed and discussed so lessons can be learned. When can we expect that review to be done in a thorough way and reported to the House? Mahsi.