It's a really good question. I'll give my personal perspective on it.
I've worked both in industry and government in several provinces prior to my position with the Canadian Institute of Forestry. The one thing that always seemed to dominate was the cost of getting good data. Really it's an investment. We have to get our mindset changed to that.
It was often a hot potato as a result of that mindset that it is a cost only. Something liked a forest inventory, which is the basis, is a snapshot of what the forest looks like right now, but moving forward you project, you model, you determine what it's going to look like in the future, what you can sustainably harvest, and how you can maintain the ecosystems, and all that. It is an investment in understanding your business moving forward.
That hot potato bounces back and forth. Sometimes it's the industry responsible for gathering that data and producing the inventories and the datasets. Sometimes it's the government. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but it's because it's seen as a cost rather than an investment.
If I could make a perfect world in the forest sector and enable the development of things like sustainable biomass or bioenergy and all of the new products we're looking at, and the whole rejigging of the forest sector that's coming down the pipe, I would somehow make it so that data could be produced, it would be seen as an investment cooperatively, and it would be openly available to entrepreneurs, companies, and people who hold tenure, as well as the government regulators and the staff who are trying to help manage and monitor what's going on.
I hope that's relevant, but that's how I see it.