Madam Speaker, I am asking for a couple of things. One is that the federal government step up to assist the province of Alberta, like it assisted the province of B.C. We know a lot more today than we did when the outbreak started in 1977 in B.C in the Spatsizi area of the province. Over the last three years, the Province of Alberta and the forestry companies in the area where the pine beetle have been coming through the parks have held them at bay, until this year, because we do not have the financial resources provincially or through the companies. They knocked down 40,000 trees last year and kept them at bay. This year it was 540,000 trees.
They are running rampant. Where did they come from? They came through Jasper National Park. I have been working with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and other groups to do some active burning there. We could have stopped them earlier on, but it was not done due to ecological integrity or something like that, I was told. However, if the government had taken some action, we could have slowed them down. We may have even been able to stop them, because we know a lot more about them today than we did when they attacked us when I lived in B.C.