Thank you to the member for London West for your excellent comments, as always.

In Ottawa, we have really seen the cost of natural disasters to taxpayers and to residents. We’ve heard a lot from the government this afternoon about saving taxpayers’ money. Let me tell you, when you have a once-in-a-century flood, that is incredibly costly to taxpayers. It is incredibly costly to homeowners as well.

One of the things that we’ve seen, as well, is that environmental assessments are incredibly important for knowing where and when it is safe to build and when it is safe to have a building project. When you don’t take the time to do that right, it is going to have more costs for taxpayers and more costs for homeowners when that natural disaster occurs.

Can the member speak a little bit more about why it is so important to have these environmental assessments done, from the perspective of the residents in Ontario?