Hon. Steven Guilbeault, P.C., M.P., Minister of Environment and Climate Change: Thank you, senator, for your question. I was talking earlier about the National Adaptation Strategy, and there is no doubt in my mind that we can’t do that without municipalities at the table. In fact, just two weeks ago, I was having a meeting specifically on that with the Canadian Federation of Municipalities. We have already started engaging with them on that, but we want them to be at the table for the elaboration of that National Adaptation Strategy.

We have already started investing in adaptation measures with municipalities. I will give the example of an investment that Infrastructure Canada made for the creation of a new urban park on the West Island of Montreal. Obviously, it’s a park, but one of the interesting features of that park is that it will help with flood mitigation during the spring in that part of the island of Montreal, where we have recurring floods year after year. The park has an adaptation and preparedness element embedded in it. Projects like that are becoming more and more common, and we’re doing those with municipalities.

Hon. Steven Guilbeault, P.C., M.P., Minister of Environment and Climate Change: Thank you for the question, senator. In fact, that work has already started. We are working on building the first-ever National Adaptation Strategy. It’s not a federal adaptation strategy. It’s a National Adaptation Strategy. We had five tables of experts last year that were looking at various elements of adaptations such as infrastructure, health and emergency response. These tables were not led by the federal government. We were there, but they were led by experts from across the country. Since the beginning of the year, we started engaging with Indigenous communities, with provinces and territories as well as with municipalities and a whole range of other stakeholders so we can build in more resilience and be better prepared to face the impacts of climate change, which you rightly pointed out are happening two to three times faster in the North than elsewhere on the planet.