Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is a real pleasure to be here today to testify on Bill C-23.
Thank you very much, on behalf of the Forest Products Association of Canada. We're the national trade association that represents Canada's lumber, pulp, and paper producers across the country. It's an industry that directly employs more than 240,000 Canadians and it's the economic lifeblood of more than 200 communities from coast to coast.
All parliamentarians are very familiar with the economic challenges this industry has faced over the past couple of years: the rapid rise in the Canadian dollar, the U.S. housing market and their economy more broadly, the troubles in Europe, and the changing demographic in terms of readership and the use of paper as everybody moves to electronic devices. All have presented what we've commonly called the perfect storm. Some might argue, in fact, that it's a changed climate for the industry.
The upshot of this—and parliamentarians, of course, are no stranger to this—is that we've been forced to close nearly 200 mills across the country and have lost nearly 100,000 jobs across the country. That has had a devastating impact on regions and certainly on a significant number of communities across the country. As I said, parliamentarians are very well aware of this, as many of you have had a number of communities in your ridings strongly impacted by what is happened in the industry.
I'm not here to say that the industry has rounded the corner and that everything looks bright and rosy, but I can say that the industry has not stood idly by as it has been challenged. It has been reinventing itself, transforming itself, moving aggressively into the bio-economy through bio-products, bio-chemicals, and bio-energy.
That represents a significant part of where this industry is going. But we can't lose sight of the fact that we still need our core products to be strong; that is, the lumber, pulp, and paper products. They need to continue to be a major part of our economic model going forward. Without them, the move to the bio-economy will not happen.
An important part of ensuring that we have a strong core for our industry is our trade markets. Our industry produces about $56 billion worth of product each year. Nearly half of it is exported. Obviously a lion's share of it goes to the U.S. marketplace, but another large chunk of it goes to other markets around the world, Europe and Asia being the primary other markets. In fact, we're the single largest exporter to both India and China.
This leads to the question why we would be here in support of Bill C-23 for Jordan. Jordan represents a market of about $20 million for our products. When you look at that in the grand scheme of things, in an industry that exports more than $24 billion worth of products, $20 million doesn't really represent a large market share.
The fact is that the Jordanian market is growing. It represents a market of nearly $400 million per year in forest products; that's what they're importing. They're getting a lot of their lumber and paper products from other countries with whom we compete. We'd like to have a bigger part of that market share. Having a deal such as this allows us to secure that marketplace and drop some tariffs on certain products. Certainly on the lumber side and on the paper side it drops some significant tariffs.
If I might use this as an example, what we found in previous deals, when we looked at the big deals such as those with India and China, is that we became excited about them, and for good reason. Those are large marketplaces that represent large potential for the industry. When you look at smaller markets, what we have found in cases such as the Jordanian deal is that it represents a very important marketplace for one mill. It's similar to what Kathleen just outlined for her membership. When we dive into these marketplaces, we find that one mill or one particular region is where that product is coming from, and so it represents a very important opportunity.
I'll give you an example. We have a product that comes out of a joint venture between Canfor Pulp, out of Prince George, British Columbia, and Tolko, out of The Pas, Manitoba. They sell cement bags to Egypt. It's a similar deal. They're competing against European producers of that product. The European producers are benefiting from a low tariff rate—in fact, 7% less than what the Canadian producers are benefiting from. This represents $35 million to the joint venture, Premium 1 Papers, in Canada and represents about 500 jobs in Canada. They are losing market share to the Europeans because we don't have competitive access to that marketplace.
In a similar vein, we're looking at marketplaces such as Jordan as a way of ensuring that we can grow and diversify our marketplaces to lessen our dependence on the U.S. marketplace and provide long-term jobs for certain parts of the country.
I'll leave it at that and I'll be happy to take questions once we've gotten through the panel.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.