Thank you all for your excellent presentations. It's always very interesting.
To preface some of the questions I'm going to ask, I grew up in a managed forest. My father was a tree cutter, a logger. So I grew up in that atmosphere on Vancouver Island. Of course, you probably know that the British Columbia forest sector is a very large player. So the impacts of what's happening with the softwood lumber dispute are going to affect us and are affecting us.
Also, I wanted to touch on one little issue with that, about the value-added industry that is also being charged a tariff, and about the impacts on the small industry that is very concerned about this deal that's going to see the large corporations get a return of some money eventually, if this deal goes through. I'm wondering about the support for the value-added small industry that's being charged a tariff. I understand that they are being dealt with through an independent arbitrator, and I wondered how that's moving along. Could you add anything to that?
Because of the softwood lumber tariffs, we're seeing more and more raw logs exported from lands in B.C., and we have big concerns about that and about what impacts this has on the fibre supply for our pulp and kraft mills, and also on jobs and communities. I don't know if you can touch on that.
I've met with operators in mills and in kraft pulp mills. I understand the perfect storm that you're talking about. I understand the impact of the dollar. They need to diversity. They've done so much with research and development, but they're still at this crisis point and are wondering if they can survive, because of the lack of fibre supply. For one thing, they have to buy it on the open market because we don't have it in British Columbia, which is quite bizarre.
We're also seeing extremes. I think somebody talked about balance, and yet we're seeing these extremes of more and more raw log exports and the exploration of oil and gas, and destruction and development in the boreal forest with the oil and gas industry. All that's taking place there. I'm wondering what a federal government policy would look like in your eyes. Maybe you can expand on some of the things. I think with the Forest Products Association of Canada, you have in your document some points you would like to see from the government, but I didn't really hear much from other folks.
I'd love to get into the minutia of the research and development, because I have a whole lot of questions there, but I don't have a lot of time. Maybe you could comment on some of those points.
Thank you.