So I get ten minutes?
Thank you, Minister, for attending and for your opening remarks. I was taking notes on some of the things you said. You mentioned $2 billion for biofuels--and underneath that you talked about logging debris as one of the sources that you would see using--and also $125 million for the forest sector. I think you mentioned that money was in part to be used for making sure that logging communities and resource communities are viable.
I just want to talk a little bit about something I brought up with you at your last visit to this committee, which was log exports. I've asked you those questions in the past, and you said to me that this is a serious issue and that your government would be looking into it and that I had your commitment that you would do everything you could to mitigate the job losses that are a direct result of log exports. Since then I've seen an increase in my community and others on that front, and it's becoming an issue for the sustainability of some of the smaller resource-based communities.
I've spoken with managers of forest companies who say that it's not profitable for them to bring logging debris out of the forest and that it's cheaper to leave it there, which is unfortunate. They also talk about the environmental aspect of leaving some of that debris on the floor. It may look bad, but I understand that it's compost at some point.
Log exports are causing the shutdown of more and more of our mills in British Columbia, and probably everywhere else. In fact, in my riding a mill was shut down for two weeks because they couldn't get logs, and yet there's a log dump just up the road, and they go by on ships on a daily basis, and they go by on trucks, but our mills can't get them. I'm just wondering if you would commit to supporting the industry in getting those logs, instead of them all being shipped out. They say that it's too expensive. I'm afraid that we're going to lose the only remaining mills that we have.