I'd be happy to, Mr. Harris. I can tell you about some of the broad-theme areas in which we're looking at spending this money.
First of all, wherever they're telling us that we need to be spending on mitigation, wherever they think there's an opportunity for...and I don't want to use the word “containment”, because you and I both know how much they've chewed in British Columbia. But if there are opportunities to stop the advancement--and obviously the biggest area is in trying to prevent it from moving into Alberta and the boreal forests--we are making those investments.
Those investments, those cheques, have been written. The money has flowed through to the province. In this area we're working jointly with the province. I believe we spent about $24 million in this area in the last fiscal year. We'll probably spend a similar amount in this fiscal year.
We're also looking at initiatives with the province on fire suppression work around communities that are surrounded by the infestation. Obviously it changes the fuel dynamics of the forestry floor and the forests. Again, we're working in partnership with the province on fire suppression work.
Obviously the other area that's very important is economic development. We can't spend all this money just on research. We don't think that's the right thing to do. There are some good things being done, but at the end of the day, we have to look at where the greatest investments are. Again, we're looking at initiatives in conjunction with the province, matching dollars with the province for large public economic infrastructure, for what we know are the great drivers--things like airports, bridges, opportunities in the railroads. We're looking at infrastructure like that and at smaller-based community economic development projects going out into the heartland of the pine beetle area and talking to these local communities.
These will be coming forward. They're not there yet. Again, we're in discussions with the province to ensure that there are matching dollars, so that the communities can tell us, “Here are some priorities where we think we can make investments in our communities that will really help move the economy forward.”
I want to add one thing, because I think it's very important that we send this message as well. The forest industry is very important to our economy nationally, right across the country, and obviously in British Columbia. British Columbia produces about 50% of the softwood lumber in Canada. We believe the softwood lumber industry will be strong for decades and decades to come in British Columbia. We're there to work with the forest industry as well. It's very important that we work there, doing the research on how to use this fibre, on how long will it last, on how to accelerate the recovery of this fibre.
So those are areas in which we're also making an investment, Mr. Harris. We're in this for the long haul, as you know. We've committed $1 billion over ten years. You can be sure that we will be investing that in all of these ways to deal with the mountain pine beetle in this area.