Thank you for that question.
I guess I'm a bit younger than Harry, as any of you can see. When I went to university, I went into the governance path, but many of the colleagues I went to school with were going to school to be RPFs. In the forest sector, because of the political tug and pull over the forest provincial agreements and land claims, a lot of my colleagues went into the “chief” business instead of going into the RPF business, and overall we're winning some of these arguments.
Now, as Harry says, we have millions of cubic metres of annual allowable cut a year on a national basis. We have done some forecasting on large niche markets that first nations could participate in. One market we're analyzing right now, certified wood products, is in the range of about $24 billion a year. Canada's percentage of that is about $7.8 billion. There's a really good opportunity to grow that $7.8 billion by about 50% if we could just get some capital into first nations businesses and get our RPFs, our technically savvy business-oriented youth, out of the political brinkmanship game and into the economic development nation-building game.
I think that is a great challenge. Harry was quite diplomatic in presenting the facts on what goes into the non-first nations forest sector. We did a quick analysis of that. Harry mentioned a figure of hundreds of millions, but we zeroed in on a more accurate number: about $1.1 billion of government funding went directly into forest products such as the FPAC system, FPInnovations, and controlled wood. That's great for that segment of the forest sector, but on the other side, while we have land claims being negotiated and economic development that could be happening in the first nations hinterland, there's very little policy support and governmental support for that side of development. I think that's a great waste of economic effort and human talent.
I think that would be an area of focus, and we're ready to play a role there. There's a new generation coming on board, and we are looking for partnership from the Government of Canada.