Mr. Speaker, the forest industry in Nova Scotia is worth $1.5 billion to Nova Scotia's economy. A possible ban of export of red spruce would be devastating to the industry. Yet the government has allowed the brown spruce longhorned beetle infestation to occur in Point Pleasant Park. It has not put Canada food inspection phytosanitary requirements in place. They continue to allow infested wood to come in on container ships on the east and west coasts of Canada.
The Canada Food Inspection Agency has phytosanitary certificates required to bring wood in from foreign countries. We have phytos required to ship wood to Europe. Yet there is a major loophole in that legislation because we allow containers made from infected wood to come into Canada and be unloaded. The government has done nothing to stop that.
Either we have to start requiring phytosanitary inspected wood to be built into the pallets themselves—