Thank you for the opportunity to speak to that.
The forest sector in the country has gone through a fairly dramatic struggle in the last five to seven years, driven by a number of different components, not the least of which are the issues--north and south--with softwood lumber and the change in the Canadian dollar. A number of components have had an impact.
What has happened is that the industry, working closely with both the provinces and the federal government, have gotten together and they've put together an organization that looks at the research and science and technology needed to transform the industry, right from the forest through to the production end--pulp and paper, solid wood products, innovative new products, bioenergy potentially, and other things.
We found, when we examined the situation, that we were quite fragmented. One organization was dealing only with pulp and paper. It was not looking at what the characteristics of the trees were in terms of what the company was trying to produce--high-quality paper, lightweight paper, coated paper, or whatever. And it was the same thing in all of the other components.
So the industry collectively, working with its funders--the private sector, the provinces, and the federal government--demolished the structure of the separate institutes and built this one. It is now the world's largest public-private partnership on R and D in forestry. Actual federal government employees are part of the institute. They act as a division within the institute.
What we have now is a partnership, working from the forest all the way through to production, that is looking at ways to make it more efficient, looking at alternative uses of the fibre, and looking at what that will mean in the near term and in the long term as the industry goes through its cycles in its revitalization.