Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to come back to testimony we had on July 31. This is in regard to Canfor from Mr. Stephen Atkinson, who, as you know, is a very respected analyst with BMO Capital Markets. This is what he said: When you look at a situation like a Canfor that is going to run its lowest-cost wood, then clearly you're going to shut down those lumber mills in the southeast quadrant. What happens then is that it'll put some of the pulp mills in danger, whether it be the Kamloops mill, whether it be the Celgar mill, and then that supply comes into question.
He goes on to talk about job losses in other parts of the country, including northern Ontario, but says at the end:Very quickly, on raw logs, really what happens there is this. Let's say you're paying a duty—pick a number again, 15% or 5% or whatever it is. If you can bring in the log without any duty to the United States, then of course it makes sense to put the lumber mill there and create jobs south of the border.
My question, obviously, on Canfor's case is whether part of your business plan is commiserative with what Mr. Atkinson has said, the closure of mills in Canada. Do you plan to expand in the United States? Similarly to Weyerhaeuser, you've scaled back your operations to a certain extent in Canada. Do you have plans to open new mills in the United States?
You've both been referring to a North American market for lumber. Of course the concern in softwood communities is that what we're going to be seeing are Canadian raw logs going to fuel American jobs. So do you have plans to expand, and are these comments by Mr. Stephen Atkinson legitimate?