Mr. Speaker, I have a letter from a constituent, Laura Bohun. She talks about her husband who has worked in the forestry industry all of his life. I will quote a bit of it. She says:
After 26 years of employment at the Ladysmith Western Forest Products Mill (formerly known at Doman) he was given a one week notice (on April 17, 2008) and told the mill was shutting its doors indefinitely, at least one year minimum. Since January of that same year, my husband only worked every other week on an on call basis. Never enough time off to apply for EI benefits until the mill shuts down on May 5.
This is only one person out of hundreds of workers in my riding. They have worked in forestry, their fathers worked in forestry and their grandfathers worked in forestry. It has been the livelihoods of their families for generations, and now these workers are being shown the door.
This was an opportunity to look at diversifying in the forestry sector itself. A reinvestment in forestry is a really important part of what should happen in British Columbia, to retrain these workers to take those new jobs within forestry. Where forestry jobs were not available, look at retraining outside the forestry sector. However, the first priority should be to reinvest in forestry.
Again, we have things like the Olympics, where foreign workers have been brought in. It was an opportunity to take a look at unemployed forestry workers in the province and see if there were some matches and skills training that could happen, which would ensure workers in British Columbia could maintain a liveable wage.