Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'll try to be brief, if that is possible. Anyone watching this must be as confused.... And I'm not intimate with the industry, as has been pointed out, because I don't have the kind of mix that Kenora, the Eastern Townships, or other areas have, but I do have Irving Tissue, which is a downstream manufacturer, in my area. It's the largest manufacturer and the largest employer in my particular constituency.
I had a visit with a broad spectrum of both the administration, the ownership and the company officials, and workers over the break. They are concerned about the manufacturing implications--and Mr. Harris has made some excellent points--but they are equally concerned about the upstream implications.
They suggested they would like to host a meeting, using York South—Weston as the venue, where the company's plant is, to bring down all of the upstream and downstream interests and have a discussion and perhaps invite the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Trade or the minister himself, or whoever, to be part of that discussion.
The reason I mention this is that when I hear Mr. Allen say there is a plant in his area that is on the verge of reopening a mill and they can't get wood, and when I hear of the problems created in the local economy in Kenora and other cities with respect to the downturn and the implications, again, perhaps of the dollar and perhaps the market slump in the United States, it's even more reason we should totally understand it. And I don't. I admit that. But I did learn a little from what has been given today.
I do not see anything in the motion that would be premature, because there is such a dislocation as we speak. I take it that Industry Canada and officials who are looking at existing programs are quite adept at applying those, and I would probably say they need more resources to do it.
So as a given with respect to this motion, I don't see it as contradictory to anything that has been said, but rather complementary in the sense that we really need to have a total understanding of this.
As the officials and the plant workers from Irving brought out very, very graphically to me, if that plant closed down in my riding, I can tell you there would be huge implications. We just lost the Kodak plant. There are symptoms that we are in a downward slide with respect to various parts of the manufacturing sector, not the least of which is the downstream paper industry as a part of the forestry industry.
So let's not get hung up on the fact that we're not concentrating on the manufacturing part, Mr. Allen, or that we should be concentrating more on the upstream part that comes under Natural Resources. Let's have people in here. Let's sit down and understand totally what the issues are, and let's approve this motion, but let's get on with the overall study we had already approved. I think that's consistent with the direction the committee has given in the past.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.