Albertan communities and groups bitten by the mountain pine beetle scourge cautiously welcomed a campaign trail pledge by the federal Liberals Sunday to commit $250 million to help combat the spread of the bug.
But Gary Lunn, the Tory natural resources minister, blamed the beetle problem on the "negligence" of Jean Chretien's Liberal majority government in the mid-1990s. The Liberals could have stopped the beetles, he said, by cutting down "a few blocks" of trees in central B.C.'s Tweedsmuir Provincial Park where the latest infestation may have begun in 1998.
"Nobody had the courage to do it because it was in a park," he said. "They're coming to the table 10 years too late. We've been cleaning up their mess."
Almost simultaneously, several stands of forest across the north central and southern part of the province became infested with beetles. But in 2006, the Tories committed $1 billion over 10 years to battle the bugs.
Grit insiders say their pledge would be a key part of a wider initiative a Liberal government would take after "extensive" consulting with the forestry sector. This would include a national forestry summit to form a strategy that would ensure the sector is economically and environmentally sustainable. The Liberal pledge would also be used to protect jobs, homes and communities.
"Canada's forestry industry is facing tremendous challenges," Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal candidate for Vancouver South, said in a statement.
The Grits would not offer specifics on how the money would be divvied up between the provinces. But Liberal spokesman Daniel Lauzon said in an e-mail that the Liberals' plan would "obviously include addressing the needs of Alberta and Albertans."
The mountain pine beetle has already ravaged forests in British Columbia and has crossed into Alberta, threatening jobs and increasing the risk of forest fires near communities.
Winter cold snaps have kept northern Alberta's beetle population at bay, but they are eating away in the Canmore and Crowsnest Pass areas.
For the past two years, Alberta's Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development has declared an emergency to tap into more beetle funding. This year the province budgeted $55 million, after spending $50 million in emergency funding last year.
The province is trying to keep the insect from expanding through Alberta's northern boreal forest and heading east across most of Canada.
John Irwin, the mayor of Crowsnest Pass and chairman of the province's pine beetle advisory committee, considers that "the greatest ecological threat this country has ever known."
Forestry advocates, such as the Alberta Forest Products Association, welcomed the Liberals' funding news -- as long as Alberta gets its fair share of the money.
"We have to keep the pressure up on the beetles," said Dave Kmet, the forestry director for AFPA.
But Cliff Wallis, vice-president of the Alberta Wilderness Association, is worried the Liberal money would just go to cutting down more forests, reducing habitat for wild animals, but failing to stop the tree-eating bugs.
"I don't know the details of the program, but if it's fighting pine beetle it's money that's being unwisely spent. . . . The problem is our land management, climate change and fire management."
