Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our witnesses.
My first question is to Mr. Casey. It was an interesting discussion on the potential to increase dimensional lumber sales and paper sales, certainly. It's also interesting, our market share vis-à-vis the Americans. On paper, in particular, we know that the Americans have subsidized their industry to a much greater extent than we have. That's really the imbalance in the export there.
I want to look at another part of it. That was your point about seeking foreign markets. Traditionally, in eastern Canada we used to export, prior to NAFTA, about $900 million worth of dimensional lumber to Europe. That dried up overnight because of pine bore nematode, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and some poor practices on behalf of the mills, quite frankly. Because of the dollar and because of a whole bunch of issues, that dimensional lumber that was going east overnight went south, and the mills became dependent on that. Since softwood lumber, as you correctly pointed out, is not under the NAFTA agreement--it's a separate agreement totally--I think we've suffered from that. Every one of these free trade agreements that we sign worldwide opens another door to lessen our dependency on a sole market that occupies 70% of our exports. We've seen that with our increased paper sales to China, increased paper sales to India, and the ability to export dimensional lumber.
Would you like to expand on that a bit? Ms. Brown, who is sharing my time, has a question, so perhaps you could be brief. The ability for that new market to help the industry is critical for our future.