Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to again raise an issue that I raised on April 26. Just to give a little background, it revolves around the Nova Scotia brown spruce longhorned beetle situation in the Halifax regional municipality. I read that the Minister of Agriculture was compensating British Columbia farmers because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency made regulations that caused farmers there to lose their entire inventory.
In Nova Scotia, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency made regulations that are causing Nova Scotia woodlot owners to lose their entire inventory because of the brown spruce longhorned beetle.
One is a flu and one is a beetle, but it is the same agency, it is the same situation, it is the same Department of Agriculture, and it is the same impact. The business operators are losing their entire inventory.
For British Columbia, the minister responded by sending them cheques, actual cheques. I think the government has spent several million dollars to compensate the farmers in British Columbia for their lost inventory because of the CFIA regulations.
However, for Nova Scotia the minister replied in the House that the government is working closely with the industry. I do not know why the government discriminates against Nova Scotia. I am not sure what Liberals have against Nova Scotia as opposed to British Columbia, but British Columbia is getting cheques and Nova Scotia is getting the response that the government is working closely with the industry.
With all due respect, the minister asked his officials to have a conference call with me to help me understand this. It was a good conference call. It was explained to me that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would authorize mills to process this timber in a certain way as long as the mills agree to a stringent set of circumstances to ensure that the beetle did not proliferate or go anywhere else.
This sounded good to me. I appreciated the feedback. I went back to the woodlot owner who had raised the issue with me. He said that the mills will not let the lumber in. They will not take on the responsibility because the regulations are too stringent.
In a coincidence, this morning I received an e-mail from a woodlot owner. I will read a few lines from it:
My experience and that of others is one of total frustration. The [CFIA] says they have worked with the industry to have mills certified and it is now up to the private sector. The mills are not interested because the requirements are too stringent.
So as for the information I received in the conference call, those people may have meant well, and they may have meant that this was a solution, but it is not a practical solution. It is not working.
Once again I ask the Liberal government to treat Nova Scotia the same as British Columbia. It is the same Department of Agriculture. It is the same CFIA. It is the same problem. The business people are losing their inventories for the same reasons. I ask the government to compensate the Nova Scotia business people in exactly the same way that it has compensated British Columbians.