Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the comments by my colleague who also is from Vancouver Island.
I want to pick up on something the minister said earlier. Perhaps the member would have a comment on it. It had to do with 1994. We heard the minister talking about how we went to dispute resolution at that time and we won. The Americans were obliged to pay us back $1 billion. That was great.
This is not 1994. British Columbia has been through a terrible economic turmoil since that time, particularly in the forest industry. We still had a very substantial Asian market in the early 1990s but when the Asian flu hit and knocked the socks out of our western forestry exports to the Asian market, suddenly the American market became much more important.
In my riding mills have gone down. A lot of the mills that were there in 1994 have not made the cut. There has been a devastating effect. It has created a new sense of urgency. There are hundreds of mill workers in my riding.
Would my colleague comment on the effects of the Asian flu and what it has done to the B.C. economy?