My Conservative colleague is heckling. One of pertinence that was brought out by the province—this is a policy I am naming for my Conservative colleague, if he does not mind being quiet for a moment to hear it—was actually a Socred, right-wing policy in B.C. that said, wouldn't it be a neat idea if we tied the value of the resources nearby to the communities that rely on those resources? That was later scrapped by another version of the Socred Party.
What we see in northern B.C. is full logging trucks passing each other every day, going six, seven, eight, or nine hours down the road to super mills, which was the model that was meant to save us if we just allowed consolidation of the industry.
We saw that with the federal government, which was no longer asking the departments that were meant to stop anti-competitive behaviour in places like Burns Lake, Fort St. James and Mackenzie. That anti-competitive behaviour built up communities that no longer had the adaptability to adjust when one company ran into trouble.
As my colleague on the Conservative benches will know, when a couple of announcements popped up in Mackenzie, it virtually killed the town. It put the entire town into a state of seizure. If we look back 10, 20, or 30 years ago, we had a much more adaptable and flexible forestry industry.
This debate is about both the past and the future. There are going to be disagreements in all corners of the House about how we got to this place. Some of us will look at the fact that we gave a veto to a foreign government in the softwood lumber agreement and allowed it to decide which measures we were taking were anti-competitive and which ones were not.
Then we allowed it to slap us with tariffs, which it did, which we predicted it would do and will do again to British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. It hit our industry with punitive damages on policy directed by the provinces, where even the federal government has no jurisdiction or role. Somehow Washington has something to say about it. What kind of agreement is that when we start to muddle the jurisdictions that are instilled and enshrined in our Constitution? These are fundamental differences of opinion that I have with colleagues across the way.
Whether it was due to a fixation on U.S. housing markets, with mega mills focused there and only there, we urged the government year after year to please allow for a greater diversification of where our markets go, to put more money into marketing Canadian wood to other markets.
We saw the housing market bubble grow and grow year after year, and we saw the over-dependence on the Canadian supplier side to that market. There were those of us both in the House and in the forestry sector who said this was a dangerous formula.
If we have an industry that is dependent upon an economy that creates a bubble and the bubble inevitably pops. However, the good times were good times and we had to keep going with the policies that got us there.
We cannot use the convenience of a global recession to say that this is what is going on in forestry or manufacturing. We have seen, as has been noted, the successive de-industrialization of our country, year after year. These are flat-out statistics. My colleagues can argue as to the reasons why or why not, but the fact of the matter remains.
It was pointed out that a study showed raw log exports went absolutely crazy in British Columbia. The federal government had nothing to say about the international trade policy on this one, for some strange reason. We saw that 5,800 jobs in 2007 simply were not there. Those are 5,800 value-added jobs that each of us would die to have in our constituencies, even 1,000.
I am sure my colleagues from Nanaimo—Cowichan and Nanaimo—Alberni would be celebrating if the front page of his paper stated that a 1,000 value-added jobs were created in his riding. It would be a great thing because those jobs are hard to come by and they are hard to create. Meanwhile we have policies that direct us not to create those jobs, rather to export those raw logs. We are made to feel that this is a sound and wise policy for the country's future. It is not.
We now have to look also to the future. Communities have stepped forward time and time again. I have watched my communities in Terrace, Prince Rupert and Hazelton absolutely go through some of the most devastating and punishing economic news imaginable.
I would like members to try to appreciate the effect this would have at home. We are talking unemployment rates of 70%, 80% and 85% when one or two mills go down. I want people to contemplate that and understand what it is to see eight or nine out of every ten workers out of work. It is devastating not just on brute economics, but on the social fabric of the community and the hope that young people do not feel as they go through school.
Recently I was at a graduation ceremony in Hazelton. I did a quick straw poll with the 60 or 70 graduates students. I asked who was planning to go away to school and then come back to the community to set up a family, a home and a life. Out of those graduates, one hand went up. That is for a reason. There is no hope for them.
Communities are coming forward time and time again with ideas and proposals, yet we see the government do something so callous, and I hope the Conservatives will stand up and answer this question.
We looked through this year's budget to find the funds dedicated to the pine beetle crisis in B.C. I hope my colleague from Prince George understands this. A commitment was made by the federal government to B.C. and its residents to assist in with the pine beetle. When this announcement was first made by the former minister of natural resources, I congratulated him in the press. I told him that it was a good thing and that we needed to get that money out the door. As we heard from the chief forester of British Columbia today, we cannot find money in the budget. It has been rolled in and the accountability is gone.
Folks are saying that British Columbia is in the middle of one of the most ecologically devastating things ever seen. The government made a serious, honest and binding commitment to the people of British Columbia to come forward with that money. We have looked to see where and to whom that money has gone. So little money has flowed out and what little was promised, no longer appears present.
We also know the forestry industry has the potential to be reborn. Someone said that we should not call this a sunset industry. Know that mill managers, town councils and chambers of commerce are coming together with ideas and proposals to diversify what happens at their mills. There is the possibility of energy generation. There is value added in different sectors. There is the ability to see this industry in a new light.
We are begging the federal government to speed it up. In the first round of announcements on money, it was 16 months before proposals were even ready to go out the door. Mayors, municipalities and plant managers were furious that it would take 16 months to get a proposal together for a so-called crisis.
We know the industry can improve and recover. It will change and it will look different, but we have to understand that the policy of a tax cut for a company going under does not allow it to make it to the next quarter. It does not allow it to have hope for the next year.
We need to have more than just one bullet, but when all we have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. The government has been ill-equipped. There must be some responsibility. The federal government has an enormous amount of power. With that power, comes responsibility. There is a responsibility in this case to own up to failed policies and half attempts and to recognize what is needed. Without this, the devastation will continue. We simply cannot do that if we are to be elected leaders of the country.