Great. Thank you very much.
I'm Dave Coles. I am the president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. For those who are interested, I'm a fifth-generation forestry worker.
With me is the former head of our research department and now my assistant, Keith Newman, who is also an economist and has worked in the industry for over 25 years.
We have 150,000 members--about 50,000 in the forest industry. Over the last 36 months we've lost 20,000 jobs permanently.
I would like to put it quite bluntly. This is probably the fifth, sixth, or seventh time.... Many of you are getting tired of seeing my face here.
I met with the Prime Minister and the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
What we're asking the government to do is to hold a national summit on the crisis--just to hold a summit with the key players of industry, the community, the unions, and the government, and find a solution.
We're a forest nation. It's not this government's fault, nor the one before it, nor the one before it. We don't have an economic strategy on forestry.
Go to Sweden, Finland, or Norway, and you have an economic vision of a forest industry, but not in Canada. You're a fresh government, you're new, and it's not your fault, but now you're there and you need to do something about it.
We have fundamental problems with our employment insurance scheme. It is a bridging for us. It is just a transition.
We need the Canada Pension Plan to enhance the ability of workers to leave when the industry is shut down. We need the government's finance committee to look at some form of bridging for those workers who are 50 to 55 years old and who can't make it to our pension plans.
So we would ask that the Prime Minister, the government, and the opposition parties drop the partisanship issue around a national summit and hold one. Get all of the best minds we have in the country together and find a solution.
We could say to you--and we have--give us $10 billion for the industry. But one paper machine, one new pulp mill, is $1.5 billion to $2 billion. We need a long-term solution, and it's about getting out of making toilet paper or newspaper and getting into products that actually have a real value, a convertible value to it, and provide a longevity to the industry.
I'd like to give a couple of minutes to my assistant so he can make a few remarks in French, and then we'll pass it on to the next speaker.