Government Operations committee  I won't add anything.

Government Operations committee  I admit to not knowing a lot about that aspect of things. But certainly long-term trends in something like the purchase of pulp and paper, or certainly trends in terms of, say, the biofuel and the bioeconomy, where you can see the growing demand of the European markets, for insta

Government Operations committee  It's a good example. I think the softwood lumber dispute, or agreement, depending on how you look at it, and what you want to call it, helped us to really understand what the volume of sales was to the U.S., for instance. Again, those sorts of statistics, if provided by the gover

Government Operations committee  We have about 2,800 individual members, and then there are probably about 50 or 60 what we call sustaining corporate members.

Government Operations committee  In essence for our membership, it's their personal information: who they work for, what university or college they graduated from, what forestry program, and where they are currently employed, that sort of thing. It's whatever is important to us in terms of tracking. Then for th

Government Operations committee  Yes. We're separate as an association. Our business isn't business per se, but it's the business our members engage in that we're interested in, the data they use, and that's really what I've been talking about today: them as individuals working in government, industry, academia,

Government Operations committee  It's whoever wants to do the science and research. That's the beauty of Canada, in that we do have very strong academic institutions that are doing the non-applied sort of science and research. Then you've got companies that get involved and engaged and will actually put some m

Government Operations committee  I think the more openly accessible the data is, the better. I generally feel that way. That's what promotes knowledge and understanding. It's the best scenario to me.

Government Operations committee  I would agree with that. Build the sets up first, make sure that you get something pretty decent to market—and I think you're getting there—and then look at that.

Government Operations committee  Go ahead first.

Government Operations committee  From my perspective, I think it's bringing disparate datasets together from across the country, if there were some really effective way to do that. There's a lot going on out there. There is a lot going on in the provinces and the territories, and it's not just in terms of indust

Government Operations committee  No, this is the first time I've heard about this. It's good that we were asked to testify, but I'm kind of keen to learn more. I gave the website a good look and did a little bit of research in advance of the testimony, but that's about it. It's a good initiative and I'm happy th

Government Operations committee  I think what happens a lot of the time is so much of the data that's required in the forest sector comes as a result of the relationships between, say, industry and the provincial governments. I think there's generally a pretty good dialogue there, and identification of what the

Government Operations committee  That's a very good point. Definitely there's always a need for better coordination and more cooperation between not just government departments but government and industry, industry and industry, any of the players that have an interest in what goes on with the land base. It's t

Government Operations committee  It goes back to my earlier response. At the risk of repeating myself, it's the idea that it's a cost rather than an investment. That's an enormous frustration for many of us. There are many individual top-quality datasets out there that individual scientists, researchers, or gr