Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to my colleague from northern British Columbia who spoke a moment ago. I am interested, of course, as to why the Alliance has brought forward this motion at this time. It is very clear that if you analyze the questions that have been asked in the House over the last period, and we can pick any period we like, six months, one year, two years, we will find that the Alliance has not been doing its job for rural Canada. It is quite understandable what those members have decided to do now: suddenly have a whole day's debate on the issue of rural Canada.
However, I can understand why, with them having dropped the ball so badly in support of the people who are their constituents while they rushed off to find imaginary scandals here and imaginary scandals there. They did all of this stuff while ignoring the constituents, ignoring the people of northern British Columbia and ignoring the people in the softwood lumber industry. They did all that, sure, and now they recognize that they are being severely criticized by the people out there in rural Canada and they are trying to recover.
It is a pretty shabby performance so far. It is the usual over the top rhetoric, which we heard from the hon. member, and of course the usual appeal to divisions in rural Canada and urban Canada. It is the usual approach, which has nothing to do with any of the problems of rural Canada.
Let me pick up on the hon. member's comment with respect to the pine beetle infestation in northern B.C. which he mentioned--