Mr. Speaker, as an ecologist, I would challenge the statement. If they have an economy that is brought to its knees by the change in price of one commodity, that is not a very diverse economy. It may be doing lots of different things, but it is reliant solely on one product. That is not a good thing.
The member talked about forestry. In British Columbia, we felt the effects of the same kind of thing about 10 years ago when we lost 40,000 jobs in the forest sector in British Columbia. People in British Columbia know what it is like to have communities that are hollowed out, with a number of mills just vanishing. We are facing that again with the softwood lumber agreement. With an annual allowable cut in British Columbia that is now set to decrease over the next few years, people will suffer there as well.
It is because we are reliant in Canada in far too many places on this rip and ship economy of just being hewers of wood. It is good to be hewers of wood, but we have to do other things with that.