Dick Harris

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Kamloops whose riding I know is dramatically affected by the mountain pine beetle. It is spreading. That is the direction of it. It is heading down through the Kamloops area into the Kootenay area,. It is just going to continue to worsen.

I am sure my colleague from Kamloops knows, as I do, that the 10 year pine beetle mitigation plan that was conceived and created by the provincial government has been presented to the federal government. I am sure she knows and I know she knows that it has been presented to the federal government. Those members are denying it tonight. There was a little slip-up earlier with the member for Richmond; it slipped out that the government knew about the plan, but quickly, realizing what he had said, he started talking about the forest fire mitigation plan.

Of course he knows that is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about forest fire mitigation. We are talking about the pine beetle. There was a little slip-up there. I am sure my colleague from Kamloops knows that the hon. Minister of Natural Resources knows about this 10 year plan too.

Does my colleague think that the reason why the government members are not admitting they have the plan is that they do not have their communications done yet? It is typical of this government that when they do announce they are going to participate they want to make sure that they are going to get their communications ducks all in a row before they make the announcement. Does she think that could be the reason? The Liberals never like to do anything unless there is a political plum in it for them. Would my colleague agree with that assessment?

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, if this were not such a serious matter I would be rolling on the floor laughing after listening to the member from Richmond, who I believe is a secretary of state. He said we have been talking about fighting the beetle, about having a war against the pine beetle to kill it. We have already admitted that there are only two ways to kill it. We either freeze it to death or burn it. That is the end of the story. There is research going on now to try to find other ways.

We have not even been talking about that tonight. We have been talking about mitigating the damage that the beetle has caused. In my question a couple of weeks ago, I said that the federal Liberals have been asked by the province to join the province in a 10 year major plan to mitigate the damage caused by the pine beetles.

Another question we talked about was mitigating the damage caused by the pine beetles. My colleague from Prince George—Peace River talked about it and I talked about it: mitigating the damage caused by the pine beetle.

The Liberals say there is not a plan. Now the members say they know about a major plan to mitigate the damage from the pine beetle. A major plan: that is what we have been talking about.

It is called a timber supply mitigation plan. The plan is a 10 year plan. They have asked this government. Members know it. The Minister of Natural Resources knows it. The Minister of Industry knows about this, the very plan the member just talked about, a 10 year plan: harvesting, economic activity and looking at new ways to expand the emerging forest industry into different areas. It is a 10 year plan.

This government is going to be awfully embarrassed because everything we say tonight is in Hansard . We have talked about the 10 year plan. My colleague from Prince George—Peace River talked about it. I have talked about it. The Liberals, up to this stage, have denied it. The date is going to be a matter of record. I would ask them to be very careful of what they say about not knowing about the plan of the Province of B.C. that has been presented to the federal government, because it does have it.

The hon. member just talked about knowing about a plan to mitigate the damage. That is the plan. It is a 10 year plan. It is some $800 million that the provincial government has asked the federal government to join in on. That is the plan.

They know they have it. That is what we are talking about tonight but the Liberals have not responded, the same way as they did not respond two years ago when the Minister of Forests from B.C. came to Ottawa with a five year plan, which was based on the assessments at that time, to help us out. I think it was $600 million over five years. That was the plan.

The federal government since then and to date has not responded to the province on the previous one. Now the estimates are far greater about the damage; the province has a 10 year plan. The Minister of Forests from B.C. was here two months ago. This minister knows it and perhaps the secretary of state knows it. The Minister of Industry certainly knows it and the Minister of Natural Resources certainly knows it and the Prime Minister of the country certainly knows that the plan was presented to the government two months ago.

They know it. It is not public, but they have it.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, it was almost amusing watching the Minister of State for Multiculturalism, the Minister of Natural Resources and everyone crowding around asking about the plan?

The same thing happened about a year and a half ago, or two years ago, when I talked to the current Minister of Western Economic Diversification. I brought the subject up in the House in the form of a question and the response came back that they had not seen an official plan yet. The minister of forestry and the provincial people from British Columbia were here on a number of occasions. They briefed all the necessary people in the federal government about the crisis.

Shortly after those comments, the official plan, gilded in gold, was presented to the federal government after it knew about the problem. The same thing exists. The federal government knows about the problem in B.C. It knows how much money British Columbia needs. It knows about the plan. I am kind of certain that the plan is here. I am not certain I am completely comfortable with what I am hearing from the minister and the Liberal members. Maybe they are not ready to deal with it.

The member for Etobicoke North said that we do not need to get too academic about it. I agree with the member 100%. Let us get down to basic facts of what this is all about. We know what the problem is. We know how to solve it and the province knows how to solve it. The member for Etobicoke North knows how to solve it. He talked about the federal government not getting in and clear cutting timber. Of course not. However, when it gave $400 million to the auto industry during the last election, the members were not down there assembling automobiles either.

The Minister of Industry has talked about another billion for industry in Canada. We will not see federal people out in the plants. We are talking about cutting a cheque to become a partner in fighting the beetle infestations crisis. How much more basic can we get than that? It is simplistic and the member for Etobicoke North knows exactly what the federal government needs to do. Unfortunately, the double and triple talk we are getting from the ministers responsible to avoid it and not show some leadership is a distance from the common sense approach to it, and we all know what that is.

We need a cheque out in B.C. to try to salvage what we can.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan talked about deforesting. Believe me, deforesting will happen in one of two ways: either we will be the ones in control of it, or a forest fire will be in control of it. That is why we have been after the federal government to buy into the B.C. plan.

I do not know if the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan was around B.C. in the early 1990s. Tonight she is talking about being selective in the forest. That was the same type of attack that we wanted back in the early 1990s when the infestation had just started in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. The municipalities and the regional districts were saying to the provincial NDP government, “For God's sake, get into Tweedsmuir Park with some selective logging, horse logging, whatever, but get the mature pine out of the path of this little group of pine beetles”. However, the Suzuki people and the environmentalists who were supporting and giving advice to the provincial NDP government at the time were telling the government not to go in there because it is a park. We have got that now.

On the other hand, we cannot keep our heads in the sand like the federal government has. The infestation has gotten bigger and bigger. The federal government put its head in the sand, hoping that the problem would go away and that it would not have to become responsible for helping out the province of B.C. The plans are already there.

Why have we not phoned? Good government is about leadership. The provincial government has shown leadership in what it wants to do. It has written the plan. It wants some leadership from the federal government to come to the aid of the province. The province has the plan. We have leadership in the province. We want some leadership by the federal government. We want it to recognize its responsibility as a partner in this country when provinces need its help. That is what the government has not done and we need it.

I suggest to the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan that she continue to urge the federal Liberal government to help out in the plan that the province of British Columbia has. I know the province will take into consideration all the environmental questions that need to be recognized, but we need the federal government to come to the province's aid.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I appreciate the question from my colleague from Prince George—Peace River. In response, let me say that the planning is done. The planning has been done for a number of years. The federal government has known that. All we have asked the government is that it come and join in the plan with some federal money. It has not done that. It has not even acknowledged it.

It is nice to see the Minister of Natural Resources here tonight because I want that minister to hear first-hand from the members of Parliament who are from the infested area so that the minister can share it with the Minister of Industry, who is from B.C., a senior federal minister from British Columbia. He has a vast background in the forest industry in B.C., a vast and successful background in the forest bureaucracy in the province of B.C. Of all the people in the Liberal government, once he got here should have been talking to the Minister of Natural Resources about how bad this is and he should have been saying that we have to do something.

He should have been talking to the Prime Minister, who has at least a couple of times in British Columbia said how serious it was and how it was going to be a priority. When Allan Rock, the former minister of industry, was out there, he said it was serious.

The day the Minister of Industry arrived here, we should have started seeing some action. The planning is all done. Let us put it bluntly and cut to the chase: what the province needs is money. We need $800 million from the federal government over the next 10 years to carry out this plan.

The planning is done. We have ongoing science and that is good to maybe figure out a way other than nature's way of controlling the little critter, but we need money. That is what it is about. That is what this debate is about. We have not had any.

The government has not recognized the problem in a responsible manner. It is all about money. We need it. The planning is done. The game plan is there. We need the government's help.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, currently, there are only two ways to kill this little bug. One is with a prolonged cold snap like the member said and that is what we have been able to rely on in the past. However, with the changing climates, I have not seen a minus 40° spell in the 45 years that I have been in Prince George. I believe the last one was 15 years ago, so that is not perhaps going to happen. We always hope it will.

The other natural way is a massive forest fire. That is my point. Sooner or later one of those will happen. If it is the latter, a forest fire, it means that all the affected pine that we were not able to get at will burn and it will be a complete waste. Sure we are going to have reforestation because the fire explodes the pine cones and we have nature's way of reforesting the woods and the bugs get burnt. That is the costly way of doing it.

We could take some mitigating steps to try and salvage what we can, and have a short, medium and long term approach to it, but it takes money. That is what I have been trying to get the Liberal government to recognize. Right now the only way to kill the bugs is with a cold snap or a fire. Maybe science will come up with some sort of chemical process some day that will stop them from multiplying. However, we must address the damage that is there now. That is what the federal government must recognize. The province cannot do it on its own.

The federal government, as a partner in this country, must recognize the importance of the forest industry in British Columbia, recognize the massive problem that we have there, and recognize that this is indeed a natural disaster, not just something that has just happened. This is a big thing and we need the federal government to remember the billions of dollars that we have sent in tax revenues into the federal coffers. We never asked for a bunch of it back, but once in a while we would like to be recognized when we have a problem.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I said that the current outbreak of mountain pine beetles was discovered in the early nineties in Tweedsmuir Park.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I apologize for saying that the Minister of Industry is not here tonight. I know I am not supposed to and I apologize for that.

We want the federal government to tell the province of B.C. that it recognizes how serious this is and that this is as bad or worse than the floods in Manitoba, the ice storm in Ontario and Quebec, and the floods in the Saguenay area. Those disasters cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The federal government was there in an instant.

We do not need any more selective disaster participation. If it is a disaster in Ontario, Quebec or Manitoba, and we have a situation that is of equal seriousness in British Columbia, let us start treating all the areas of this country fairly. That is all we ask from the government. We have seen precious little of that.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I am really appreciative that this debate is taking place tonight. As you pointed out earlier, this debate was requested by the government House leader under the standing orders. I want to proudly point out that I requested this debate through our House leader, not the Liberal government. Had I not requested this debate tonight, I doubt whether this issue would be brought to the floor of the House of Commons.

This is a massive disaster in the province of British Columbia, and it is moving into Alberta because of the lack of processes and attacks that could have been done many years ago when this infestation was first discovered in the province. The Minister of Natural Resources spoke a few minutes ago about the work that the Canadian Forest Service has done, and indeed it has. The Canadian Forest Service, as far as I am concerned, wrote the book on the mountain pine beetle and the government has every right to be proud of the work that it has done. It identified the damage that was going to be caused when the pine beetle was discovered in Tweedsmuir Park way back in the early nineties.

The problem we have is that the provincial government of the day and the federal government under Mr. Chrétien did nothing to stop this small, in the beginning, spread and infestation of the mountain pine beetle back in the early nineties. For political reasons, the provincial NDP government was being told by its supporters and environmentalists that it could not go into the Tweedsmuir Park area and arrest this infestation. The provincial NDP government of the day listened to its political supporters and the environmental groups. That is one side of it. On the other side, the federal government perhaps could have been a lot more proactive in making people aware of the problem and in its offers to arrest the problem in the initial stages.

So here we have a massive infestation of the mountain pine beetle of 10 million hectares in British Columbia at the current stage. That is about 300 million cubic metres of dead mature pine. It is going to grow to about a billion cubic metres of dead mature pine by the year 2013 or 2014. It does not look like we are going to get a cold snap of -40°C or better long enough to arrest the flight of these bugs.

We, along with the province, must look at how to mitigate the damage that has been caused. There are a number of ways. We must get the value out of the wood that we can. We must get the wood out of the remote areas of the forest. We must look down the road because we must do some aggressive logging to get as much value out of the damaged wood as we can in a short period of time. There will be a shortage of softwood and pine down the road. We must make adaptations to mitigate that, and get communities and business involved in value added and creative marketing.

This all takes money. This is what is making me angry with the Liberal government. The minister stood and said the government has been doing all this work, that it has been studying it and having talks, and that it has given $40 million. Out of billions of dollars in damage, the government has given $40 million, out of an initial $122 million asked for by the province. That is one-third of what was asked for, way back in the initial request. Some $20 million went to research, which was a great thing. The Pacific Forestry Centre has done a pretty good job and has this little destructive critter figured out by now.

The other $20 million went into some community projects which were run through the initial application through Community Futures, then it went through Western Diversification, then it went to the federal government's political office, and finally ended up in the minister's office. The people who got the contracts, if we look hard enough, or maybe not so hard, perhaps had ties to the federal Liberals.

A few years ago former minister Allan Rock was in central B.C. with the current Prime Minister. They talked about how disastrous and how serious this was, and how it was going to be a priority. They got on the Challenger and were flying back over the Rockies when altitude amnesia set in because we never heard anything about it. The minister talked about this being important. We have heard that story before.

Two years ago the minister of forestry from British Columbia came to Ottawa and asked the federal government to participate in a five year plan. Based on the assessments at that time, it looked like we could manage the mitigation with a five year plan. That request was for about $600 million total over five years. That request was never responded to. The government did not participate and did not say that it was going to participate at some time.

Recently, the provincial minister of forestry was in Ottawa again, now with new estimates of potential guaranteed damage. The province of B.C. brought a 10 year plan because there is far more damage than what was initially thought. He brought it to the federal government and it talks about $700 million over 10 years, as the federal government's share of the 10 year plan.

About a month and a half ago, there was very little in the news about this issue. The government did not mention that the minister of forestry from B.C. showed up. There has been no response. I have asked a couple of questions in the last two weeks and there has been no response. When is the federal government going to realize just how serious this is? Talking about it is one thing; actions speak louder than words.

I know the hon. transplanted member for Etobicoke North across the way knows the pine beetle issue. He must be disappointed with the lack of action by the federal government. The new Minister of Industry from B.C. undoubtedly knows this pine beetle issue better than anybody, save for maybe the scientists at the Pacific Forestry Centre. He certainly knows the economic impact on the communities. I am disappointed that he is not here tonight. He is probably busy, but I had hoped this would be a high priority on his mind, being the Minister of Industry, seeing as how this is affecting the forestry industry of B.C.

[Forestry, December 13th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I am very happy to hear that the minister's department, Natural Resources Canada, has brought this to his attention. It looks like they have done some good research. I am happy the minister now knows about the mountain pine beetle problem we have. By his own admission, he has declared it to be a massive and very serious problem.

The minister obviously has been briefed by people in his department, and I am happy about that. The members from B.C. and those who have a background in British Columbia know about this. However the message that we have been trying to get across to the government is that this beetle infestation in the forests of British Columbia is every bit a natural disaster as the floods in Manitoba and the Saguenay, and the ice storms in Ontario and Quebec, where the federal government came to the aid of those disasters with hundreds of millions of dollars to help restore and mitigate the damage caused by those happenings.

What we cannot understand is that the federal government, contrary to what the minister has said, has basically turned a blind eye to the beetle infestation, this natural disaster that is devastating our forests in British Columbia.

Unfortunately, the help, which the minister has said the federal government has given, simply does not measure up to its responsibility and obligation and the precedents that it has set over the years in coming to the aid of other areas of Canada that suffered natural disasters.

Why has the government not recognized this pine beetle infestation in the province of B.C., which is and has been going on for about 13 years since the newest outbreak, at the same level of concern that it has in the instances of the floods in Manitoba, the ice storms, et cetera, where it was quick to come to the aid in those situations?