Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for his speech and for articulating the importance of the forestry sector. Certainly I know that, and the people in Courtenay—Alberni know that.
The Alberni Valley once had the highest median income in Canada. Fort McMurray had the oil patch for producing great wealth for Canada. What we have seen, though, in the last 10 years, is a tenfold increase in raw-log exports. That has been under the previous Harper Conservative government, the B.C. Liberal government, and now the federal Liberal government.
My concern is that senior levels of government have downloaded to provincial governments and have washed their hands of responsibility. Most of the forestry is taking place on private land, and it is federally regulated. It needs to be a priority for the federal government, and we have not seen any action on it.
We have seen mill closures in our communities. Right now, Port Alberni does not have the highest median income in Canada; it has the highest poverty rate in British Columbia. Even people working in the forestry sector who have those few jobs in raw logs, almost the only jobs left in our community, are saying that this is not right.
We need action on investment in our technology so that we can process our fibre, and we need to stop raw-log exports at the speed it is going right now in our communities.