Mr. Speaker, it was not my intent to speak this evening. I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Chicoutimi for allowing me the time to speak this evening and the opportunity. I would also like to speak to the patience of the rest of the members of this Chamber who are waiting to speak at this late hour and congratulate them on the fact that they are in this Chamber and prepared to speak on this important issue.
There are a couple of important things that we should recognize. Number one, we are here late at night discussing an issue of national importance. I am not going to try to add to the eloquent statements that have already been made by many of the members who have been here this evening. I think most of it has been said. However, I have sat through this debate and I would like add a few things to the debate.
First, I was able to look at much of the damage up close and was shocked and appalled at the extent of it. Frankly, I was amazed at the extent of it. We drove from Montreal to Sherbrooke in darkness. You could see the flashing lights on the electrical trucks as far as you could see. There were not five or six, there was not a dozen. There were literally hundreds of them. You had to be there to understand just how bad it was.
The natural resources, the farms, the forestry resources of eastern Ontario and southern Quebec are not only damaged, much of them are devastated. The magnitude and the scope of this damage I don't think parliamentarians, our provincial people or our municipalities have fully understood yet.
Quebec produces 80 per cent of the maple syrup produced in Canada. Ontario produces another 10 per cent. Where are we going to make up that loss? How are those farmers going to put those trees back into production? The tops are broken off the sugar maples, the limbs are stripped from them. Unfortunately I do not think they will ever come back. When the sap starts running in March, we will have an industry that will be lost and completely devastated.
One of the reasons I wanted to stand tonight to speak on this issue is that there has been another area that has been overlooked. The forest resources are going to have to be harvested in much of eastern Ontario and much of southern Quebec. The sugar maples will need to be harvested. The bush without question will have millions and millions of cords of wood that if we don't do something with will be a fire hazard and will be a complete loss.
If we face a summer in 1998 like we faced last summer, we can expect rampant forest fires in all those areas affected now. The woods are dangerous to walk in, dangerous to work in and they are almost impossible to work in. Somehow we have to look on a national scale at some type of a salvage project for these two areas.
The other point I would like to make which everyone else has made this evening, and I will not take much time because there are people waiting to speak, is that we understand the hazards. We understand the dangers. We certainly understand that we have the ability to rise above that.
I think that speaks to the resilience of communities, of municipalities, of provinces and certainly to the resilience of the nation of Canada. Most of all, and I would like to close on this note, I think the events of the past months have spoken to the resilience of the Canadian people.
