Industry committee  In many cases, our mills are located in rural areas where there is no other method of transportation, and/or where trucking, which would be the natural alternative, is prohibitively expensive, because of the nature of our products and the markets they're destined for. So it's not

Industry committee  Governments and industry must work together to try to facilitate this transition. In the past, communities, employees and governments have worked together and with a great deal a success. The situation requires us to join forces and work together to deal with the problem.

Industry committee  In this industry over the last 15 years or so, global trade has increased dramatically and has put much greater competitive pressure on us in many markets than we had in the past. Even within what we would consider to be our domestic market, which is North America, you would see

Industry committee  We are keenly aware of the fact that restructuring can often lead to great hardship for communities. Our industries are set up in these communities, and that is where the people who work in our industry have grown up. These are not easy decisions to make, especially when a plant

Industry committee  This is one of the areas that has been a big priority for FPAC since its formation. We really think, as Canadians, that we undersell ourselves and our products. The Fins and the Swedes, both industry and government, don't hesitate to trumpet all the good characteristics of their

Industry committee  That's a big question. On the environmental side, there are a couple of issues that have been important for us. One is renewable energy, which I've talked about a fair bit. I think we want to have a role, and our sector should have a role, in the government's made-in-Canada rene

Industry committee  I think if you look at the age profile within the industry, in all aspects of the industry, particularly in the production facilities, the industry is aging, as is the Canadian population, but probably faster in the case of our industry. So certainly we are going to need a lot of

Industry committee  Well, I think what we've seen over the last few years in the United States is quite an unprecedented and sustained boom in housing construction. We have started to see over the last six to eight months that prices start to fall off for lumber and housing starts start to drop a bi

Industry committee  Over the last ten years, we invested between three and five billion dollars a year in production and capital assets. We also invested about 500 million dollars a year in research and development. Our industry has been one of the most proactive in terms of converting to renewable

Industry committee  I'm sorry, I thought you had two other questions.

Industry committee  More and more, as many industries across Canada, we will need skilled workers. One of the things that has happened--

Industry committee  I'm sorry, I don't. I could get back to you with that, but we don't deal with the legal costs.

Industry committee  The best manufacturing equipment in this sector comes from Europe. One of the reasons for that is that the Scandinavian countries, about 20 to 26 years ago, adopted concerted national strategies around their forest product sectors. They realized that their forest product sectors

Industry committee  I'll let Shawn speak on the human resources issue, since I didn't touch on that.

Industry committee  I think it's a fact of life for the forest industry that the lands are crown lands, that they're held as a matter of the public trust, and that they're managed to meet a variety of objectives, including commercial objectives. I think it's just the way we do business.