Thank you Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this afternoon.
I understand Mr. McGuinty's frustration with Iogen being in his riding. Iogen was proposed to go to my riding in Prince Albert and set up this facility. In fact, they did a lot of groundwork and they brought in a partner by the name of Shell. Once Shell was brought into the picture, all of a sudden it seemed like everything was a stop sign. It's unfortunate, but that's what happened. It's unfortunate that they tried to relocate I think to Portage la Prairie, and even then they couldn't justify the numbers.
I think the reality in the region is this, and it goes back to what Mr. Jean and I have been saying. When you look at doing business in parts of Saskatchewan now, the labour shortage is so severe that it drops the cost of production, and the cost of construction goes up. I have a pulp mill going on in Prince Albert right now. I need 300 employees just to run it. I don't know where to get them. I need 400 employees just to do some construction inside this pulp mill, and this is actually the same pulp mill that Iogen was looking at to make into biofuels. So I can understand why they went to Brazil. There are probably some economies of scale, there are probably some feedstock prices that are cheaper in Brazil. There are other commercial activities going on in the background of their decision.
I think we can take pride in knowing that technology was developed here in Canada, and it's still going to be redeveloped and redefined. I can still see a day when Iogen is going to build a plant here, somewhere, either in Ontario or Saskatchewan. I look forward to that day.
It leads into one question I have, and that's on the $500 million. We have that $500 million fund sitting there that never really did get take-up. Is there anything we should be changing in that fund to actually get it utilized?