Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to open with a couple of comments and then I have three questions.
My first comment is that I appreciate your creating a business climate, because I think you're right, that is important. Some of the things we've done with respect to lowering the taxes and things like that.... Your accelerated CCA is a good point.
I'm also comforted to know about direct subsidies, although that makes me comfortably uncomfortable, considering some of the mills that have closed in my riding. I do understand that giving subsidies does not cure the problem.
However, on the pine beetle, I do want to take a moment to thank my colleague, Mr. Harris, who's been a real bug on the pine beetle file, if you will, since leading up to 2005 and the commitment of our government to get $1 billion. I think Mr. Harris has played a tremendous role in that and has single-handedly fought that. Thank you, Mr. Harris for that, and thank you for reminding me about beetles every day.
On capital stock, it really disturbed me when I looked at your report on the competitiveness task force. Looking at the charts, especially in Atlantic Canada, even our best-practice mill is really cost-inefficient, with some exceptions. When the dollar was hanging at 68¢ to 75¢, did some companies miss some opportunities when they were making money at that to reinvest and didn't take that opportunity? That's my first question.
My second question is that with the $127 million FP Innovations money we put in, we have an AV Nackawic in my riding, which is now making dissolving pulp, which is going into rayon, which is a value-added product. Can you tell me how you think you would interface with that FP Innovations in terms of the betterment of the innovation?
My third question is around optimization of wood supply. It seems to me that when I look at a number of cases where wood is being chipped up and going either to fire furnaces or whatever it happens to be, or being shipped out of the country to burn, we may be losing a high opportunity on veneer logs and things of that nature for creating value-added products. Do you think we could do better than that, and is there a place for optimization of that wood?