Madam Chair, I have been listening to this debate with much interest. I think we should put this in some context.
The northern interior of British Columbia is approximately 50% of the land mass of the province. The softwood lumber that comes from this area represents about 21% of Canada's softwood lumber production. I have seen estimates that the infestation has affected $6 billion worth of timber. This is a huge problem.
Some might ask what my interest would be, as I am the member for Etobicoke North. There are a couple of reasons. I lived in British Columbia for 12 years and got quite involved in forestry, and ironically this past year my own riding of Etobicoke North was threatened by the Asian longhorned beetle. Fortunately it did not turn out to be as bad as we thought but it can be devastating for communities. The Asian longhorned beetle problem in my riding does not come close to the devastation that the pine beetle is wreaking on the residents of northern British Columbia and on the total economy of British Columbia.
The reasoning of the member for Nanaimo--Cowichan is the same kind of reasoning that kept the British Columbia provincial government from going ahead and declaring an emergency, which would have called for clear-cut logging. Let us cut to the chase. Doing these interventions at this point in time, going after the host trees or the blue trees, the felling and the burning in a selective way, the only way to deal with a huge infestation like this one is with salvage logging, with clear-cut logging.
That brings me to the point about which I am a little confused, because I am not quite sure what role the federal government can play in a salvage logging operation. The delineation of responsibilities, federal and provincial, is quite clear. Surely they are not asking the Canadian Forest Service to go in there and do some clear-cut logging. There might be a plan. I would like to see the plan. I was just chatting with the Minister of Natural Resources. He has not seen the plan. The parliamentary secretary has not seen the plan. If there is no plan and if we have not seen the plan, how can we react to a plan?
I certainly have not seen the plan but I would like to know what role the plan envisages for the federal government. Clearly the Canadian Forest Service has a role to play when it comes to research. It has a role to play in terms of the export policies as they relate to international trade, as it deals with the softwood lumber dispute with the United States. Its jurisdiction is quite clear.
In fact it was only a few years ago that the federal government partnered with a number of the provinces with the forest resource development agreements, the old FRDAs. Those were cost shared agreements to replant forests. They were all eliminated, actually at the urging of many of the provinces. They said they did not want the federal government planting trees, that this was a provincial jurisdiction.
I empathize with the members for Cariboo--Prince George and Prince George--Peace River. They live and breathe this every day of their lives.
I had the good pleasure many times to visit Prince George, to visit forestry operations. In fact the company I was involved with in Toronto owned 50% of a big operation out there, Northwood Pulp and Timber. I think it has since been sold.
There are so many different forestry operations in that region, areas like Burns Lake, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, Fort St. James, Fort St. John, Houston, Mackenzie, McBride, Smithers, Valemount, and Vanderhoof. When I see those names I am reminded of my many trips probably to every one of them. They are forestry communities and there are many other forestry communities as well.
This is a huge problem. When we look at the interventions, how we can deal with this, the best way would be to have a cold snap of -40°C right at the beginning of the winter. That would pretty much deal with the mountain pine beetle. We all know that B.C. has not had that kind of climate. In fact I would hope that it causes the members opposite to look at the effect of climate change and global warming. Surely that is one of the impacts it is having in northern B.C. We are not getting those cold winters that kill the beetles immediately. We do not have the cold and there is no real prospect that B.C. is going to get that kind of cold weather. Therefore what do we do when the beetle starts expanding its sphere of influence every day and takes over huge swaths of forests?
What happens to this timber? I have had the disturbing experience of flying over many of these areas. What we see are the red tops of trees. We know those trees are infested with beetles. In terms of their ultimate value, there is a way to log these trees at a certain point in time and still get good value from them. However, even with the passage of time, their commercial value becomes very limited because they rot and discolour. That is a huge problem.
Therefore, what can we do? If we go in with massive logging operations, we end up with a huge supply of timber on the market. What do we do with that? Timber that is salvageable is put through the sawmills, then more lumber is shipped into the U.S. market and prices are affected negatively. I am not talking about a small area. A huge amount of lumber would be created from this type of devastated forest.
I am not sure what the answer is. I wish I could stand here and say that there would be a huge federal role. Maybe there is one, and I would like to see what it is. However, it is not up to the federal government to go in and do clear cut logging, that is for sure.
The minister and colleagues have talked about the $41 million initiative, the mountain pine beetle initiative. I suppose that is to help with doing some research and trying to envisage the world post the beetle. The real answer is to stop the growth and spread of the beetle. The only way to do that is to log it.
There are some people in British Columbia and across Canada who would say that it would be terrible to clear cut those forests. As the member for Cariboo—Prince George noted, they will be gone anyway. We might as well deal with the spread of this beetle because one way or the other that timber will be ruined.
I did some work in the private sector. We looked at the Canadian Forestry Service and at different models for the delivery of its programs and considered whether they should be decentralized or centralized. There is the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria. We actually recommended that it decentralize some of the research to Prince George. I think the government did that for a while. I do not know if the Canadian Forestry Service still has a research capability in Prince George. The argument we put forward at the time was that we could not deal with the forest industry in British Columbia without focusing on Prince George and the Prince George region. Too much is going on there and it is too important for the livelihood of many people.
I will throw out some statistics. Located in the northern interior of British Columbia are 141 production facilities. They provide about 25,000 direct jobs and 55,000 to 75,000 indirect jobs. I have already commented on the percentage of the softwood lumber exports that come from the northern part of British Columbia, and it is enormous. The region produces more than five billion board feet of lumber annually. That is enough for 640,000 new single family homes. When the mountain pine beetle comes in and creates this kind of devastation, that has a huge impact for the local economy and the economy of British as a whole.
We can talk about all the other types of interventions in an academic sense, but they will not work. We have to get rid of the trees that are infested and we have to stop the growth of the infestation. The only way to do that it to do some control or prescribed burns into these areas or we salvage it, log it and clear cut it. Anything else I think is just missing the point.
The citizenry in British Columbia has to accept the fact that they need to get in there and clear cut these areas. No one likes the idea of clear cutting forest, but when the alternatives are much worse, then that is something to which we have to face.