Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, bonjour, committee members. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today.
It's a pleasure to present issues affecting the forest sector with my colleagues from the Forest Products Association of Canada, the Canadian Boreal Initiative, and J.D. Irving, Limited.
My discussion this morning, my brief remarks, will focus on the future of the forest sector in Canada.
Nature has given Canada a forest resource of staggering size and variety. We have 10% of the world's forest cover and 30% of its boreal forests. Canadians recognize that with great gifts comes great responsibility, and they expect that Canadian governments, federal and provincial, will meet exacting requirements of social, economic, and environmental stewardship on behalf of the citizens who own the resource.
In fact, this is the mission and mandate of the Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada: to employ our scientific resources, which are amongst the largest in the world, to ensure that our forests are used sustainably and that we extract wealth from our forests in ways that meet high environmental and social expectations.
We feel that industry, governments, communities, aboriginal groups and non governmental organizations work well together to oversee a forest that directly and indirectly supports 900,000 jobs in over 300 forest-dependent communities across Canada.
Canada now has the largest area of third party independently certified forests in the world--120 million hectares of forest lands as of December 2005.
But as Charles de Gaulle observed, writing in the 1930s, the only way to stay the same is to change. Applied to the forest, this means two things.
First, it means recognizing that we can always do a better job. We can always work with our partners to meet higher and higher standards that will be expected of us. We need to embrace change in a framework of continuous improvement.
Second, it means that the business of the forestry sector will need to change if it is to survive, and some of these changes will no doubt be painful. We are in the midst of a restructuring from a period when our resource and its infrastructure were enough to secure our place in the market. This is no longer necessarily true. Issues such as increasing global competition, weak markets for some key products, combined with changes in fibre supply, increasing input costs, and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar are challenging the industry's ability to remain competitive. I suspect you'll hear more about that from my colleagues of the Forest Products Association of Canada.
This means that for the industry to stay the same, that is, continue to be a big contributor to Canada's economy, it will need to focus on technology, innovation, and skills, as well as on the forest endowment. Ten years from now, it will not only be producing paper, 2x4s, and other panel products, it will offer a range of products from energy and bio-products to a variety of specialty services.
The array of products and services will be determined by our determination to seize opportunities, which are grounds for optimism when talking about this huge renewable resource. But we are at the beginning of a revolution in understanding what the forestry sector can do for us. One thing is a given: Canadians and customers will demand that whatever we do meet the highest standards of environmental, social, and economic performance.
The Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada is not just talking about these issues. We spent the last year restructuring our internal resources to focus our efforts on five strategic directions to support them: promote sectoral competitiveness, ensure forest sustainability, pursue a sustainable future for rural Canada, promote a culture of innovation and R and D, and expand our international influence.
This has not been easy but will pay dividends in helping the sector increase the economic value of Canada's wood fibre assets.
Canadian forestry has a bright future, but the future will look different from the past. I believe that Canada's forest sector has the courage to change and the talent to succeed, creating more value and expanding opportunities by harnessing Canadian innovation and ingenuity. Natural Resources Canada is here to support this.
This concludes my formal remarks. I look forward to responding to any questions you might have.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.