Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank the witnesses. While the subject is an interesting one, it is not particularly easy.
I would like to focus for a moment on the testimony provided by Mr. Boivin and Mr. Lachapelle. We have already heard three or four hours of testimony and we are no further ahead now than we were before. However, we do know that people will suffer, and that employees have already lost their jobs and may well lose their homes. I am trying to reconcile your testimony with that of Mr. Boivin and Mr. Lachapelle.
Mr. Boivin said that there is access to raw material, to trained workers and to plants, and that investments have already been made—in other words, everything is there. Mr. Lachapelle, you made the point in your testimony that there are other cuts still to come. The picture is more negative. You said that we were far from our market and that the exchange rate is hurting us. That is nothing new.
By way of example, I would like to tell you a story I heard in recent months. I was told that we were importing lumber from China. I wonder whether there are markets that could possibly be further away. If our competitive capacity amounts to that, I think we have a problem. I am trying to reconcile your two points of view, but I'm having a lot of trouble doing that.
Mr. Boivin, I know that you made a good presentation. I agree with you that investments have been made and that people don't understand why the companies involved are not able to manage or maintain those investments, as well as the jobs they decided to invest in last year in Quebec.