Madam Chairman, I am somewhat heartened by the discussion that has gone on tonight.
I am a person who has lived in a resource based riding for the last 42 years. I have earned my living from resource production. Basically mining but certainly forestry is a big producer in my area. I am talking about northwestern British Columbia, which is probably a bit of a microcosm of the natural resource history of Canada. We have had mines come and go. We have had the forestry industry wax and wane. It is a real indication of how critical and how important resource industries are to the local economy but how tenuous they are when it comes to world commodity prices and situations that affect them.
I would like to give a little history on some of the mines that have come and gone since I lived in that riding over the past 42 years. I started out at the north end in Cassiar, which was a world famous asbestos mine. Asbestos has its connotations for some, but it has produced a lot of products for the Canadian export economy and has created a great deal of wealth for the north over its lifespan. It is no longer there for various reasons.
The mine at Stewart, a world famous gold, silver, lead and zinc mine, is long gone but was a real producer in its time. Mines come and go. We have Eskay Creek producing today. It is a world class silver producer with some very substantial gold values as well. It is an incredible mine. It will be mined out, but it is there today and is producing wealth for the north and for Canada.
Windy Craggy, which we heard a lot about a few years ago, was a potential world class copper, cobalt and gold property. They spent something like $50 million proving up the ore body and going into pre-feasibility studies and had the rug pulled out from under them for mainly environmental reasons. That is a real tragedy in terms of a resource that could have produced thousands and thousands of man years of jobs and billions of dollars of revenue and contributed hundreds of millions of dollars into government coffers over 30 or 40 years with the potential for other mine development in that area.
It is a very pristine area but if done properly these things can be done. Balance is the key to the whole development of our natural resources. There is a price to pay for everything but the price has to be acceptable. If we can come up with an acceptable way for development, whether oil and gas, minerals, forestry, hydro electric or whatever, some projects are doable and some are not. There has to be that balance. We have lost that balance to a large degree and that is something we have to try to get back, because of the potential for the wealth of Canada that can be generated. We cannot forget that.
There are some other mines that have come up such as the Grand Isle copper mine. In my little town of Stewart there was the Grand Duke copper mine which was the world's largest underground copper mine at one time. It was huge, having a thousand men working there. There are still millions of pounds of copper underground there, but the mine is gone. It is closed down. It is not viable to operate for a number of reasons which I will get into at the end of my 10 minutes.
If we took a thousand jobs out of a town the size of Stewart, it would be down to 500 people. When jobs are gone, the community and the people suffer. We are lucky we have the Huckleberry mine. It is not in my riding but the ore is hauled into the port of Stewart. It is a copper mine that is producing today, marginally viable, but it is luckily enough still producing. We have the Kemess mine, which is a fairly new one. It is a copper mine in northwestern B.C.
We have to encourage these types of developments. Unfortunately it is getting more and more difficult for mining companies not only to find new ore bodies but to develop them because of red tape, restrictions and problems that are put in their way.
We have the potential for oil and gas. In northeastern B.C. it is booming. Fort St. John, Fort Nelson and all along the Alberta border and into Alberta is booming area with oil and gas development. I envy them. It is creating jobs and putting food on the tables of families and creating revenue for governments. That is what we need to do.
On the east coast we have Hibernia and Sable Island producing oil and gas. Hibernia is a huge benefit to the eastern part of Canada. On the west coast we have the potential for oil and gas that is 10 times that of Hibernia. It is huge, but nothing is happening.
We have a moratorium on exploration, not on production but on exploration. We are not even allowed to go out there and have a look at it. The message I want to send to government is that it is time we took a real hard look at this. Technology has evolved. The environmental restrictions are there and there are ways and means of doing things that were not there 30 years ago when the moratorium was put on.
The potential is there, 10 times Hibernia, for pulling B.C. out of the economic doldrums which it is in right now through no fault of the government. I guess we all contribute. It needs to change. We need to do something about it.
The pulp and paper industry in my area is absolutely critical to feeding families and putting food on the table. The FCI pulp mill is in Prince Rupert. The communities of Terrace, Kitimat, Stewart, Smithers and Hazelton depend on that forest resource. It is getting tougher to be able to develop resources. For a number of reasons we are able to develop resources but the cost is rising and it is getting tougher.
The point I wish to make is that if there is a mountain of gold but the gold cannot be produced at a profit it is a waste. If it is not ore it is a waste. It is that simple. That is the problem we have today.
Ninety miles north of my home in the Stewart area is what is called the Ground Hog coal field. It has been known for almost 100 years. It is a world class anthracite coal deposit. It is the cleanest burning coal. It is a wonderful product.
We actually shipped coal to Newcastle from there on a test basis. A hundred thousand tonnes of Groundhog coal was shipped through the port of Stewart some 10 or 12 years ago. It has not been developed. There are reasons for that. It is not economically viable. The companies that own it look at these projects and because of all the hoops that have to be jumped through and world markets and commodity prices that all contribute to the bottom line. If there is no bottom line they do not develop.
We are having difficulties with the fishery which is another natural resource. In my maiden speech I touched on the Pacific salmon treaty and some of the fisheries management difficulties that we are having on the west coast. There are some real difficulties in the herring roe and kelp fishery in terms of licences going one way or another and the balance not being there any more. The fish industry is very concerned about this.
We have potential in water, another natural resource. We have the Kemano project, a hydro electric project that produces power for Kitimat. It is a huge project that has been there for many years and yet Kemano completion was shut down. There was a second stage to the original project which was shut down.
We have to ask ourselves why these things are happening. There is something wrong. The potential is just absolutely phenomenal and this is one small corner of Canada, northwestern British Columbia. I am sure it is happening all over the country. We need to ask ourselves what we can do. The backbone of Canada is its natural resources and its people. We have to look at providing long term benefits to communities when we produce these resources.
I know that is a concern of my colleague across the floor. It is a message I am getting loud and clear. Over the past 40 years resource communities have gone through the ebbs and flows of peaks and valleys. The valleys are getting deeper unfortunately and the peaks are getting a lot less frequent.
There has to be long term benefits accruing to these communities. That is something that we really did not deal with in the past very well. We have to look at that to see how we can stabilize this community, especially when we develop finite resources such as metals, minerals, oil and gas. Forestry is a little different because it is a renewable resource. If we deal with that properly we can have trees forever. I will get arguments on that, but I know we can if we do it right.
People is the resource that gets forgotten very often. How many times have I seen a mine shut down, all kinds of government funds come in to help people move away and relocate and then the town dies? We have then lost a lot of the good people and the potential for developing something else becomes more difficult because the workforce is gone. It just compounds itself.
We have to recognize and understand some of these things. What can we do to encourage our resource industries? The taxation aspects are critical. The industry has to be allowed to make a profit to reinvest. Flow through taxing for mining was mentioned. That is a good start. We need to pursue that a lot further.
As an example. in B.C. last year roughly $25 million was spent on mining exploration. We need to spend $150 million per year to maintain a level that would see some new mines coming out in the future. There is a huge problem that has to be dealt with.
Security of tenure is critical to the mining and forest industries. That is a big problem, especially in British Columbia given land claims. There are a lot of messages here.
A program put in many years ago by the Conservative government in 1957-58 was called roads to resources. That opened up the whole northwest corner of British Columbia as well as, I think, a number of other areas in Canada. That is something the government should take a look at again in regard to some sort of program that would allow some of the more remote areas with huge potential to develop. I am not saying to subsidize anything. I think industry has to stand on its own two feet, but government's role is to provide the basic infrastructure of power, roads, ports and so on.
I see that my colleagues across are nodding, so I assume they are hearing me. I do appreciate that. I have enjoyed this opportunity, Madam Chairman. I think it is a good format and we should continue it.