Well I like how he at least heaped some of the blame on the provincial liberals and their $100 million dollars fund....

Where is Dick Harris? He usually only shows up at election time? I wonder what files he has on his desk?

What is Jay Hill going to do about Musharraf's comments last night calling Canada wimps and claiming his country knows war better because they have 10 times as many dead fighting insurgents? It made no sense. I think the guy feels backed into a corner with the India back Northern Alliance forming Karzi's Afghan government; and now Musharraf is getting tired of being a nuclear power that shelters a.q. and the taliban terrorist networks with out using them. I figure hypothetically imports from the new port of Prince Rupert container port could be a prime target with PG ground zero. I wonder what Jay Hills plan is for that. I would start by calling it for what it is, and protect our borders and imports before the state and corporate sponsored terrorists define us and our rights, if we all ignore the obvious....

Uh, let's get this straight.

There was money budgeted for the beetle battle, but not allocated to any specific purpose. They took the money back. But no, that's not a cut in funding.

Goshgollydarn us northerners shure are stoopid. Right Jay? When we see money taken away, we think that money has gone. When really, according to your blame-somebody-else twisted logic, the money was never really there in the first place.

Here's a thought. Instead of dreaming up ways of muddying the waters, why not find a suitable purpose for the $11 million that was supposed to help deal with the pine beetle? If you have the time...

I would feel more comfortable if he took leadership and said we believe in ethonals future as part of our climate change plan and this is what we are going to do about it. Substitute ethonal with co-gen, or other uses of the forest resource through sustainable diversification.

A leader with no plan will not find solutions to the problem.

The following comment was e-mailed to us for publication:

Dear Sir

Jay Hill's spin on the claw back of $11.7 million in pine beetle funding
has lost the confidence of this northerner in his government's commitment to addressing the problem. He claims his government "did NOT cut Mountain Pine Beetle funding" in one breath and in the next states that the $11.7 million clawed back was set aside "to address the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic". Mr. Harris, his partner in spin, speaks of "unused" money. Perhaps these gentlemen should speak to the graduate students at UNBC and other universities, who had ommitments made to them to fund research on this severe problem, that continues to expand throughout British Columbia and beyond into Alberta, Saskatchewan, and even Colorado.
There are two issues here. One is spin doctoring the claw back. The other is the act of pulling the rug out from under those
individuals who have committed to years of study focused on this epidemic in our Canadian forests - commitments made by the agencies responsible for those funds. Messieurs Hill and Harris can spin it all they want. but the
reality is that the money was originally intended to address the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic, the money was committed to a number of initiatives for pine beetle research. Those commitments need to be honored, not only
for the integrity of this government to prevail, but to ensure that all is done to deal with the insidious nature of the pine beetle epidemic. The government's latest report expresses growing alarm about the spread to other species of pine. The research undertaken is applicable to the well documented, inevitable, and developing problems within other tree species. These problems are growing as national and global weather patters change. To halt research into this epidemic at this critical stage is an
admission by the government that the war is lost, no further research is necessary, and to quote Mr. Hill, that the focus needs to shift to
"mitigate the epidemic's impact on local and regional economies". That buys votes, but does not address the epidemic at hand. The government's actions are beyond belief.

Richard Giroday

If you think waving money in the air is going to stop beetles from eating trees then you are deluded.

Stopping the epidemic before it got out of control would have been a good start. Not planting / allowing monoculture forests would have been another bright spot - Blame the Provincial Governments at the time for that little legacy

Spending millions to study just how screwed we are? Spend it on lifeboats 'cause the ship is going down.....

As usual, whatever Hill and Harris said didn't clear up anything. The newspapers and those whose funding has been cut still insist that the cuts indeed happened.

Ottawa politicians are well practiced in the art of fuzzification. Hill and Harris are no exception.

Well, what else is new?