Mr. Speaker, I will try to deal with all those questions.
First, I would point out that in the comments by one of my experts he said, “In 2001 a B.C. industry task force called for $600 million“--which seems to me to be a tad more than $40 million but I am not sure--“in federal assistance over 10 years and in 2002 joined with the province to request an additional $125 million over five years”.
My math is not all that great, but I come up with a total of $725 million that was recommended by experts and requested by the province. The response by the federal government was $40 million. It seems to me that there is something of a shortfall.
My friend keeps on going back to the question and we have answered the question with respect to Kyoto and the whole issue of climate change.
While I recognize it is his turn to ask me question, I would ask him, if all that is happening under Kyoto, in addition to some of the glossy advertising that the federal government is attempting to put together and trying to influence people in that particular way and having very little effect, what is gained by taking carbon credits from Russia on old information, on information that existed when it was the U.S.S.R. instead of Russia? Their economy fundamentally collapsed. As a consequence, they have so-called carbon credits left over to sell.
What are we going to do? I guess Canada will transfer hundreds of millions of dollars, nay billions of dollars, to Russia in order to get away with continuing to put out carbon. carbon, I should mention in the case of Russia, that will now increase as a result of the turn back in the economy. The economy in Russia is now starting to come back up again and this is all stale dated.
All that is basically going on is buying and selling of carbon credits and a little bit of advertising. If that is going to solve the pine beetle problem in the mind of the member for Yukon, then I think he has been looking at too many northern lights.