Mr. Speaker, I want to read for members one line from the motion we are debating today: “the re-establishment of an economic diversification program for forestry regions similar to the one that the Conservatives abolished”.
I am happy to say that I played a part in the program that was put together, but there is one issue that has not been mentioned. The program was open-ended because we did not know what forestry would face and there were many challenges. We could not foresee things such as the extremely high Canadian dollar. It was open-ended and it had a lot of value.
I have a question for the member. In April 2007 the Liberal Party announced that we would hold a national forestry summit. We wanted to bring together all stakeholders. There are five or more different and distinct regions of forestry in Canada, those being the east coast, Quebec, northern Ontario, the west, and the coastal region. We see tremendous value in bringing all of them together to discuss some of the issues and find an answer and a long term solution for forestry.
Would the member and her party support putting together a national forestry summit to try to deal with some of these issues from all aspects of forestry?