On the first issue, the tax credit, what I have in mind is that with all those proceeds that eventually will come back to us, and taking into account that the industry is going through a major crisis and needs big reinvestment big time, the government could convert this to a big opportunity for us. Anybody could use part of the proceeds—because I'm pretty sure most of the proceeds will go against debt payment, but there will be some used for reinvestment because we need to reinvest to be more productive. I refer to productivity, lowering our costs, and not to volume. A good incentive could be that if we do invest, we'll have access to tax credits to help support investment. I think it's a great opportunity for the government and it would certainly be appreciated by the industry.
That takes care of tax incentives, because we need tax incentives. The American industry has tax incentives and the Brazilians have tax incentives to invest, so why not Canadian producers?
The second point is this. In terms of flexibility, Mr. Rolland explained very well what I had in mind. We deal with customers with whom we have long-term contracts; for example, Home Depot. Once a year we sit down with a client and agree to a volume for the year and then ship through the year. To live up to the contract we need some flexibility. In other words, if the day comes when you hit the wall with the quota, then what do you do with your contracts? We should take care of that issue in the mechanism to account for the quota amount. It's possible by a carry-forward or a carry-back within a period of time; if it's not quarterly, it could be annually. But we need flexibility to take care of those contracts we have with major customers in the States.
We are a good example of a quota for new entrants. We invested over $90 million four years ago to build a new sawmill in northwestern Ontario. In our case, the only market that mill can access is the United States. We can't think about shipping to Toronto; we're too far away. If we don't get the proper quota, we jeopardize the existence of that mill. So of course I'm in favour. I'm speaking for myself, but I have to be in favour for other people too, and I think this problem is being taken care of. We all realize it's going to end up in the provinces' hands, but we'd like you to convey the message to the provinces somehow that they have to take care of new entrants.