Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
In particular, Mr. Lindsay, it's nice to see you again, as always. I have a second question for you, but let me read some things into the record here just so we can get a sense of “then and now”, as the chair outlined in his opening remarks. I'll just read some facts into the record about the forestry sector and what's happened since this government took power.
Since 2005, annual revenues in the forestry sector have declined from more than $80 billion per year to less than $54 billion in 2013. In 2005 the forestry sector was contributing more than $31 billion to Canada's GDP each year, but by 2013 it had plummeted to just $21 billion. In 2005, the year this Conservative government came to power, there were 339,000 jobs in the forestry sector. By 2015 there were just 216,500 jobs in the forestry sector.