Madam Chair, I am really appreciative that this debate is taking place tonight. As you pointed out earlier, this debate was requested by the government House leader under the standing orders. I want to proudly point out that I requested this debate through our House leader, not the Liberal government. Had I not requested this debate tonight, I doubt whether this issue would be brought to the floor of the House of Commons.
This is a massive disaster in the province of British Columbia, and it is moving into Alberta because of the lack of processes and attacks that could have been done many years ago when this infestation was first discovered in the province. The Minister of Natural Resources spoke a few minutes ago about the work that the Canadian Forest Service has done, and indeed it has. The Canadian Forest Service, as far as I am concerned, wrote the book on the mountain pine beetle and the government has every right to be proud of the work that it has done. It identified the damage that was going to be caused when the pine beetle was discovered in Tweedsmuir Park way back in the early nineties.
The problem we have is that the provincial government of the day and the federal government under Mr. Chrétien did nothing to stop this small, in the beginning, spread and infestation of the mountain pine beetle back in the early nineties. For political reasons, the provincial NDP government was being told by its supporters and environmentalists that it could not go into the Tweedsmuir Park area and arrest this infestation. The provincial NDP government of the day listened to its political supporters and the environmental groups. That is one side of it. On the other side, the federal government perhaps could have been a lot more proactive in making people aware of the problem and in its offers to arrest the problem in the initial stages.
So here we have a massive infestation of the mountain pine beetle of 10 million hectares in British Columbia at the current stage. That is about 300 million cubic metres of dead mature pine. It is going to grow to about a billion cubic metres of dead mature pine by the year 2013 or 2014. It does not look like we are going to get a cold snap of -40°C or better long enough to arrest the flight of these bugs.
We, along with the province, must look at how to mitigate the damage that has been caused. There are a number of ways. We must get the value out of the wood that we can. We must get the wood out of the remote areas of the forest. We must look down the road because we must do some aggressive logging to get as much value out of the damaged wood as we can in a short period of time. There will be a shortage of softwood and pine down the road. We must make adaptations to mitigate that, and get communities and business involved in value added and creative marketing.
This all takes money. This is what is making me angry with the Liberal government. The minister stood and said the government has been doing all this work, that it has been studying it and having talks, and that it has given $40 million. Out of billions of dollars in damage, the government has given $40 million, out of an initial $122 million asked for by the province. That is one-third of what was asked for, way back in the initial request. Some $20 million went to research, which was a great thing. The Pacific Forestry Centre has done a pretty good job and has this little destructive critter figured out by now.
The other $20 million went into some community projects which were run through the initial application through Community Futures, then it went through Western Diversification, then it went to the federal government's political office, and finally ended up in the minister's office. The people who got the contracts, if we look hard enough, or maybe not so hard, perhaps had ties to the federal Liberals.
A few years ago former minister Allan Rock was in central B.C. with the current Prime Minister. They talked about how disastrous and how serious this was, and how it was going to be a priority. They got on the Challenger and were flying back over the Rockies when altitude amnesia set in because we never heard anything about it. The minister talked about this being important. We have heard that story before.
Two years ago the minister of forestry from British Columbia came to Ottawa and asked the federal government to participate in a five year plan. Based on the assessments at that time, it looked like we could manage the mitigation with a five year plan. That request was for about $600 million total over five years. That request was never responded to. The government did not participate and did not say that it was going to participate at some time.
Recently, the provincial minister of forestry was in Ottawa again, now with new estimates of potential guaranteed damage. The province of B.C. brought a 10 year plan because there is far more damage than what was initially thought. He brought it to the federal government and it talks about $700 million over 10 years, as the federal government's share of the 10 year plan.
About a month and a half ago, there was very little in the news about this issue. The government did not mention that the minister of forestry from B.C. showed up. There has been no response. I have asked a couple of questions in the last two weeks and there has been no response. When is the federal government going to realize just how serious this is? Talking about it is one thing; actions speak louder than words.
I know the hon. transplanted member for Etobicoke North across the way knows the pine beetle issue. He must be disappointed with the lack of action by the federal government. The new Minister of Industry from B.C. undoubtedly knows this pine beetle issue better than anybody, save for maybe the scientists at the Pacific Forestry Centre. He certainly knows the economic impact on the communities. I am disappointed that he is not here tonight. He is probably busy, but I had hoped this would be a high priority on his mind, being the Minister of Industry, seeing as how this is affecting the forestry industry of B.C.