Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
It was indeed a pleasure to hear from Dr. Exner-Pirot and Mr. La Salle. These are some of the things that I have been trying to say for years. We have to understand that if we're not paying attention to these sectors of our society, then we are losing out in so many different ways.
We are talking today about opportunities and barriers. I first want to talk to Mr. Nighbor from the Forest Products Association of Canada. The U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council has continuously campaigned against your industry. As a matter of fact, and you mentioned this, the NRDC recently sponsored legislation in the California and New York legislatures to get those states to stop sourcing from the boreal forests in Canada, Sweden and Finland. Ironically, these are three of the world's leaders in sustainable forest management, human and labour rights, and providing well-paying, family-supporting jobs in forestry, especially here in Canada for our first nations people.
This parallels the foreign-funded organization's misinformation campaigns that have attacked our energy sector, one of the world's leading and most environmentally friendly oil and gas providers, which, like your industry, hires so many first nations people.
I would first like to ask how we can best counter these attacks. We have them within our own nation as well. What do you think would be the impact of the NRDC's action on the sustainability of the world's forest products sector?