Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on something that my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford said earlier. It concerns the government's failure to provide contingencies for disasters that may happen throughout the country such as the avian flu in the lower mainland of B.C.
I also want to talk about the disastrous pine beetle epidemic in the forests of British Columbia which has at this point devastated the interior of British Columbia which is far bigger than the entire area of Vancouver Island. That infestation has been going on for about seven, eight, nine or ten years now. While the government has been aware of it, it has sat back and offered zero help to fight that infestation. In fact, it has denied it. That beetle is now on the western side of Jasper and Banff national parks and due to infect forests under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Almost two years ago the Province of B.C. put forward to the federal government a six year beetle attack plan requiring about $500 million in total to be successful. The province asked the federal government to come to the table with half of that money in consideration of the billions of dollars of taxes that have come from the forest industry of B.C. to the government's coffers. To this date nothing has happened.