Mr. Speaker, I am rising with respect to a question that I asked in the House previously regarding forestry and pine bark beetle.
I am the proud member for Vancouver Quadra which is an urban riding. It is a riding in which the history of the city has been built on the forestry industry. There are many families in Vancouver Quadra who remain directly or indirectly dependent on a healthy forestry industry.
There were two challenges that I raised in my question. One was the difficulties in the forestry industry in Canada. In British Colombia, the lumber sector, value-added manufacturing, and pulp and paper have been struggling. Many jobs have been lost, communities have been affected, and families are obviously very affected. Their retirement security is uncertain. The ability of their children to afford post-secondary education is at risk.
That is the economic challenge that the government has not properly addressed, compared with its very generous support for other industries, such as the auto industry.
The second challenge is the pine bark beetle. In British Columbia 20% of trees in our province are dead or dying from pine bark beetle. We have hillsides of grey, brown sticks, where every tree in the pine forest has been killed by the pine bark beetle. Whole landscapes look as if they have been bombed. There is a tremendous impact on communities dependent on those forests, but there are also impacts on the soil and the water, the ability of the soil to absorb water, the erosion of soil, and on wildlife.
These pine bark beetle dead forests are like kindling. They are tinder dry. Fires burn much hotter and spread much more quickly through these dead forests. Many of these forests are in interface areas around communities. In fact, 103 aboriginal communities are at risk.
The government promised $1 billion over 10 years to address the pine bark beetle problem and very little has been done. This is a promise broken that undermines the safety and security of people and communities across British Columbia.
I just want to quote the B.C. First Nations Forestry Council vice president who claimed that last year's:
--near-record forest fire season in B.C. has been exacerbated by the federal government backing away from providing millions of dollars to reduce the threat of pine-beetle-killed wood.
The mayor of Lillooet, where a fire came within a kilometre of the town, agreed that the federal pine beetle program was cut. There is no doubt that the pine beetle exacerbated the summer's wildfires. He said that there has not been progress on dealing with the pine bark beetle.
In the last two years there have been no dollars in the budgets to show a pine bark beetle commitment. This has been an undermining of an important environmental and economic challenge in British Colombia. It is a broken promise by the Conservative government.