Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses for being here. If I have time I'll come back to Mr. Fenn and ask him about the finance minister's much ballyhooed press conference, where he talked about how difficult it was to buy the latest Harry Potter book in Canada—much to his later embarrassment. But we'll come back to that.
I hope I have a chance to ask Chris Jones something about tourism, because I have a northern Ontario riding of 110,000 square kilometres, which happily includes Hearst. I thank the mayor of Hearst for making the long trip to help us out today. I should point out that the mayor of Hearst is the president of the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association, so he's well qualified to speak for a large number of communities in northern Ontario.
He talked about communities being really stretched and stressed by forestry, and I would add towns like Espanola, for pulp and paper; the Nairn lumber mill, which has closed down; Midway Lumber Mills in Thessalon, which is about to close down; and in Chapleau...he knows all their stories.
Let's say the federal government had a program, Monsieur Sigouin, that partnered with you and other communities to say we're going to be your partner. You have the ideas for economic development. You want to transition to the next cycle of the forestry sector, which means there will be changes. You want to transition to the diamond mining opportunities up in James Bay area. There are other opportunities. It's not hopeless. You know that's why you're here. There is hope, but it requires transition and change. So if you had some federal and provincial dollars in your community, what are some of the things you could do?