Actually, prior to working with the community of Elk Lake, I spent some time with the Ministry of Natural Resources prior to the sustainable forest licence invention or creation. Since that time I haven't been directly involved in the management, but I have played roles in sitting as a board member and the president of our cooperative sustainable forest licence.
I can't speak from a broad perspective, Mr. Boshcoff, in answering either at a provincial context or a national context, but with respect to the Timiskaming forest, our area, which is roughly 1.5 million hectares, is a very well-managed forest. In terms of direct technical sustainability issues, I don't think there's a lot that can be done at this point. It came through the independent forest audit about four years ago, three or four years ago, with flying colours. A separate, removed, independent body recognized the efforts of that administration to do everything and more that was needed to ensure that forest base was sustainable.
I think where a group like this can go is in respect of forest-dependent community sustainability, and that ties into some of my comments with respect to the forest communities program and how we make sure that those things fit together.
As Terry mentioned, we're the people who FPAC talks about being directly affected by this downturn. We need to be front and centre and involved in how the industry moves ahead and how it ultimately emerges from this. We want to be there to support them, but we want to be at the table.