And I wonder, Jason, is that the reason why we don't have a stormwater management charge in this city? Because I know that there have been steps like that proposed in the past.

So I would just echo a couple of these points here.

We've actually looked at what we consider to be the most efficient, effective and legitimate policy tools local governments can use to generate the revenue they need to reduce flood risk.

And a stormwater charge always emerges as a number one.

One of the reasons is, is it treats stormwater management as a utility, meaning it's a service that we're all benefiting from.

And it's true.

When you flush your toilet, when you put your water on, when the water doesn't back up into your basement, that is the city that's doing that work there.

Litigate the records of the leading candidates and any pledges you've seen from them thus far, knowing it's early.

What do you think about this idea of like an arm of the military that is for... fighting wildfires and, and a central or like a centralized agency kind of to, to delegate that, that force.

Yeah.

Well, I'll speak to the water, the water bomber idea, I think is a good one.

We, we are going to have to hit this 5% GDP commitment.

I, you know, there definitely would be a way to channel some of that money into water bombers.

We make them here and, Our provinces have put in orders for water bombers right now.

The De Havilland facility in Calgary can make about 10 a year.

Jason, what do you think of that idea of requiring people who are moving into or moving back to areas that are fire prone, requiring that they build with certain materials and there being, like Edith mentioned, their financial assistance for them to be able to build with those materials? Jason, what do you think?

So what are some of the information you can share with us on this, Jason?

Right.

Well, it certainly seems that both Saskatchewan, uh, and Manitoba, the Prairies in particular, um, are becoming a bit of a ground zero here for some extreme weather events.

Um, since 2021, 30 catastrophic weather events.

That's adding up to about 2.5 billion in insured losses.

That's almost $1,000 per person over five years, and 140% higher, uh, than the previous five years.

Insurance is a business.

But we think about, uh, the high price of housing everywhere across the country these days, and for people that are, uh, you know, saving up, scrimping and saving every dollar they can to buy that first new home, and they think they've got their budget all figured out as far as the mortgage payment, property taxes, but they've certainly got to be a- adding to that equation how much are they gonna be paying quite likely monthly for their property insurance too.

In your view, who's responsible for all the confusion about coverage?

I think this is on our provincial and federal governments.

Provincial governments are the major actors responsible for disaster management in Canada.

They could see this coming as they very, very slowly started to pull back on what would be available in terms of disaster assistance.

They're increasingly saying that if a loss is insurable, taxpayers should not be paying for it through disaster assistance.

That's a reasonable principle, but it only works if people actually have access to insurance.

And there are two things that the federal government committed to and our provinces are supportive of this that we have yet to see materialize.

What's your advice to people then who are navigating this and looking into their coverage and thinking about what they need in the future?