When we started this sawmill up it was actually prior to my involvement with the corporation. I was involved in the community and other aspects, so I'm quite familiar with this. At that time the softwood lumber disputes were happening between Canada and the U.S., which created a lot of ambiguity for the industry, and understanding what that industry.... There was a lot of volatility in the market at that time, so that was one of the factors. We weren't really fully engaged and probably didn't have sufficient capacity or support within the government , I think, to better understand that as a small northern company. A large part of that was because everything was being run out of Ottawa, so there wasn't a lot of local capacity to engage at that time to help us advance the model. There were some finances provided to the company on some of it, but at the end of the day I think the key was a better understanding of the market from that end.
The other thing that was a challenge for us and was unique to the Yukon, from what I understood, or unique to the north, from our experience, was the very limited timber harvesting agreements or permits that we were able to get. We would get very late in the year, with last-minute notice, authorization to harvest, say, 15,000 cubic metres within a three-week to four-week period. This required a very high level of mobilization in a very short period of time, which escalated the cost of doing that, to get it all done and out of the woodlot in a very short period of time.
Again, this was largely due to engagement through Ottawa. I think having direct access locally and having people who are actually able to be more adaptable with their policy would allow us to create timber harvesting that would probably be a little bit more effective with the realities up here, and hopefully, have direct access to allow us to be able to express our concerns a little more directly to the government.