Madam Speaker, securing a softwood lumber agreement in the last four years would have been a big start, but that will not help us right now.
We need an infusion of funds to help our workers who are close to retirement so they can bridge that retirement gap. We need an infusion of funds to help our communities and contractors diversify themselves economically so they can retool their equipment and maybe take advantage of some of the oil, gas and energy opportunities, if the Liberals have not shuttered that as well.
We need to ensure we do whatever we can. All we need to see from the government is action, but all we have had is inaction and platitudes.
Our hon. colleague is a stalwart and stands up for our forestry workers. We have not yet recovered from the 2017 wildfires in B.C. and now we see this economic downturn in our forestry industry. Communities are declaring an economic state of emergency.
We need action from our federal government. We need to ensure it is pressing our provincial government to act, and we have not seen that for forestry workers and contractors. The industry is failing in our province and it is all because of the policies and the inaction by the Liberal government. That is absolutely terrible.
We need to see action. I had hoped to see at least some statements to that fact in the Speech from the Throne, but we saw nothing. We just saw more backslapping, platitudes and space-time continuum, which do nothing for our ridings and our province of British Columbia.