Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank the witnesses for meeting with us today, and particularly Mr. Simard, whose community has a single industry, in a way, as well as Mr. Carrière and Mr. Lamontagne, who are making a heartfelt appeal. Mr. Ménard pointed out that there is no lack of culprits in terms of all that has occurred. Many people are to blame for these closures, but the victims never change: they are the workers and their communities. That came through in your presentations, gentlemen, and particularly the comments made by Mr. Carrière.
I am from Lévis. We have a shipyard there which has had its share of problems. As you say, these are situations that families and workers have trouble coping with. Jacques also referred to that.
I would like to come back to one point. As politicians, we have a role to play. My father is a scaler, from the Sainte-Croix school near Quebec City, in the riding of Lotbinière. He knew how to handle 2 X 4s. He still has his little piece of land in Saint-Elzéar. His land is a real garden. For Quebec and for the entire country, the forest is also an asset. As a politician, I believe in the importance of the forest industry. As Mr. Simard said, it is not only there to produce 2 X 4s, although 2 X 4s are already very good products. Some people say it's a carbon sink. That's the sort of thing we could focus on to emphasize the environmental side of it. The fact is that it stores carbon dioxide. We can tell our friends at Greenpeace that a 2 X 4 is truly environmental.
That said, I would like to return to the industrial side of this. We talked about the automobile industry, where there is competition. Companies did receive help from the government and began to pay back that money. This week, I was with Ministers Paradis et Lebel. Minister Lebel fought to secure $1 billion for the communities. We want to be sure that this money is well invested. I want to underscore that, because it's easy to talk about what can be done, but personally, I believe we were able to accomplish something with that $1 billion in terms of greening business. Can we do more? I think so, and I agree with Mr. Ménard on that score.
However, I can tell you that in recent weeks and months, I have supported measures aimed at helping industry, to the extent we are able, under international agreements. I also supported measures for workers. I hope they will yield the expected results.
My first question is for Mr. Simard, but before I ask it, I would like to invite Mr. Carrière and Mr. Lamontagne to comment on what my colleague, Mr. Gourde, said. He referred to the fact that you have profitable plants in which investments were made, and yet they are shutting down. There is some background to that. A number of players are involved. Perhaps you could comment.