Federal Liberals Can’t Keep Pace with Pine Beetles

December 15, 2004

“Surely to God the Minister of Natural Resources would have some clue about what is going on in British Columbia! He was just there. If he wanted to meet with people right there on the ground whose livelihoods are affected, people who are going broke, their businesses are going broke, surely to goodness he could meet with them without someone having to pick up the phone!”

I made those heated remarks in the House of Commons this past Monday evening. Finally, we in the Official Opposition had persuaded the federal Liberals to debate the Mountain Pine Beetle crisis to convey to all Canadians the urgency of the epidemic and to exchange solutions.

After listening to my colleagues and I detail the tragic impact this infestation has had, and will have, upon our constituents, the Minister of Natural Resources, John Efford, stood to ask why the NDP MP from Nanaimo-Cowichan hadn’t telephoned him to discuss the pine beetle outbreak and why the rest of us hadn’t bothered to show him a plan to combat the epidemic.

To say I was floored is an understatement. $4.2 million hectares of pine (that’s the same size as Denmark) has already been affected by this pine beetle outbreak. For a federal cabinet minister to admit he’s been sitting waiting for the phone to ring is not only unbelievable, it’s just sad. As I added in my remarks, “This is the type of leadership that unfortunately we have come to see all too often from the Liberal government.”

I’m just one BC MP that has written the federal Liberals countless times, the Prime Minister, the Finance and Natural Resources ministers, throughout the past several years demanding a federal commitment to combat the pine beetle. We’ve repeatedly raised the issue during question period (I did so again just this year). Where has the minister been?

Partly due to his lack of response, I wrote his colleague, Industry Minister David Emerson, this past August. Mr. Emerson, is the former CEO of Canfor and I hoped, as did many forestry companies and workers, that he would fight for the industry at the cabinet table.

Apparently he didn’t make much of an impression on the Natural Resources Minister. He came to Monday night’s debate claiming to be unaware the province of BC had a detailed $850-million pine beetle plan and that it had asked the federal government to sign on two months ago.

So far, the federal government has invested a paltry $40-million dollars to address this disaster. That’s for a $16-billion-per-year industry providing 160,000 direct and indirect BC jobs. Following the SARS epidemic, the City of Toronto received $10-million from the federal government just to run tourism ads.

I wasn’t the only MP to note that the minister’s comments and the federal government’s response to the pine beetle epidemic is the latest example of why western alienation still exists in BC. If you’d like to read my speech and the solutions I proposed during the December 13th mountain pine beetle debate, you can find it at www.parl.gc.ca.

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