But I'm here, so you're asking me the question.
Look, I had the honour of serving that department for two years during COVID, deploying extraordinary measures to keep people safe during a particularly difficult time in our history that we're still feeling the effects of.
What we've seen through that is that there are massive socio-economic gaps that need to be closed, so that increase is, in my mind, entirely justified. It's keeping people safe and alive. In the cases of flooding and fires, we know that indigenous communities are disproportionately exposed, partly because Canada placed them in swamps and areas in flood zones and has exposed them to it.
We can talk about climate change, which is increasing that vulnerability, but there's a role that Canada played, and we see that in some of the settlements that I have.... We've seen that with the flooding of Peguis, for example, just earlier this year.
We're not doing enough, and I think Minister Hajdu has acknowledged that. We will have to do even more if we don't start moving into mitigation projects, and clearly they are underfunding. Otherwise, we'll spend the money on the back end, as we've seen through the fire season and through the flood season.