Madam Speaker, I am here tonight because I asked the government, a couple of weeks ago, about responding to the issue of the pine beetle infestation in the forests of British Columbia.
I purposely asked the minister of forests because of his long and excellent background in the forest industry. I believe that, of all the people on the Liberal benches, the minister of forests would be the one who would know the issue far more than any one of them or all collectively.
I asked the minister why the government had not responded, despite calls from the province of B.C., for assistance in mitigating the damage that the pine beetle infestation was causing in the forests of B.C.
At the present time there are approximately 300 million cubic metres of lodgepole pine in British Columbia that has been infected and killed by pine beetles. That number is expected to rise to 1 billion cubic metres of lodgepole pine, which is a major part of the softwood harvesting in British Columbia. To put it another way, by 2013, 80% of all the lodgepole pine trees in British Columbia will have been either killed or infected by the mountain pine beetle.
About two years ago, the B.C. minister of forests came to Ottawa with a five year plan. It was based on the assessments at that time. The minister asked the federal government to participate in this five year plan. The cost was about $600 million. This was in order to mitigate the infestation, and participate in the reforestation. The province asked the government to join in.
Two years went by. The government did not respond in any way to that mitigation salvage plan. I want to ask the government, why not?