Finance committee  Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee today. Staff have already received our pre-budget submission and they have a copy of the more extensive remarks, so I'll try to keep my comments brief in the interest of time.

Finance committee  The Forest Products Association has not got an official position on a carbon tax per se. Different provinces, Alberta and others, have some carbon tax. What we've done, on the pulp and paper side in particular, is reduce our emissions by 67%. Then, with the most recent program th

Finance committee  There have been a lot of initiatives by both the provinces and the federal government to try to help the forest sector, including the green transformation program. The report by the Canadian Forest Service in September itemizes a number of those benefits. We've made changes to th

Finance committee  The forest industry is part of a larger shippers' coalition, including the grain industry, the chemical industry, the auto industry, the mining industry, and others. We're not looking for additional regulations; we're looking for a dispute settlement mechanism. I can't speak for

Finance committee  The infrastructure challenges across the country are not to be minimized or trivialized, but no matter how many trains you have, if they don't show up at your loading dock, you can't get your product on them.

Finance committee  Not to go over sad news, but there were a series of severe hits on the forestry sector, broadly defined, in the last number of years, beginning with the change in the way people read their newspapers or read their newspapers online. The newsprint sector was hit. U.S. housing st

Finance committee  Concerning the products in the mills, the Scandinavian countries have a very good supply chain and many of our mills would purchase from them. We are making aggressive investments and FPInnovations is working very cooperatively with the academic community, the research communit

Finance committee  I appreciate that we are out of time.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Hoback. That's an excellent question. I think it's a challenge for all of Canada and all industries with the aging demographics of baby boomers, but particularly in the forestry sector. Because we did face those down periods due to layoffs, our workforc

Finance committee  The time I didn't use on the last one I may use on this one. The rail companies have reached out to some of our members, but the Forest Products Association, through my colleague, Catherine Cobden, tried on a number of occasions to come up with an agreement that would be accepta

International Trade committee  I get the impression that the welcome wears off relatively quickly.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, members of the committee, for the opportunity to present to you for the first time. I have been pleased to be the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada for 92 days, not that I'm counting. It's a great experien

International Trade committee  Yes. I don't think it's country specific. I think it's for all forest products coming in.

International Trade committee  Yes. I'd be glad to share it.

International Trade committee  It's an excellent question. It's not unique to the Indian market, obviously. At the risk of sounding like I'm repeating myself, the whole premise behind the Vision 2020 exercise of our members in the Forest Products Association of Canada is to move to that next level of value-add