Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his little history lesson on the mountain pine beetle. Having lived in central B.C. where the main part of it started, I am well aware of the facts that he brought out.
The government has not recognized that this is a full-fledged natural disaster. It is not just some little bug that just happened along in B.C. This is in the same magnitude as the floods in Manitoba, the ice storm in Ontario and Quebec, and the floods in Saguenay. There the federal government recognized that they were in fact natural disasters.
This, which the government does not get, is as much of a natural disaster as any of those other examples. That is the issue. This is a natural disaster that is destroying the forests of British Columbia. It is destroying an industry in British Columbia that has contributed billions of dollars in tax revenue to the coffers of the federal government over the last many decades.
Two years ago the B.C. minister of forests came to Ottawa and asked for $120 million. That member knows it. He got $40 million. There is another 10 year plan needing $800 million based on the new assessments. The government has a responsibility to respond to that request.