Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you again to all the presenters. This has been a very good study.
We're hearing a lot of recurring themes, and we heard it again today in the group that's before us. Some of what I'm hearing is that Canada has been very short-sighted in terms of encouraging investment in research and development, and that's led to where we are today, with a crisis on our hands, and 30,000 job losses in the forest sector across the country. We're hearing about the impacts on rural communities, many of which are in my riding of Vancouver Island North. We're very forest-dependent. I come from a logging family, so I understand the cyclical nature, and I've always said this is much bigger than what I ever remember my father experiencing in his work life.
One of the things we're also hearing is there is a market out there and we need to adapt to this changing market. Right now there seems to be a market for our raw logs in Asia, yet we're not manufacturing any of those logs here, and that's created a lot of the downturn. A lot of the companies are not based in Canada, and I wonder, from anyone's experience, what does that mean? If the companies are not investing in our country, they're basically taking the money and running. What does that do?
I had a motion in this Parliament to stop raw log exports, but also to encourage value-added manufacturing, whatever that could be. We're hearing that training is important, and we also heard about investment in fuel, in biomass.
This government just invested a lot of money in the grain ethanol business. I just want to know if you, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Irving, believe there should have been more money invested in the forest biomass research and development. Because in the grain and corn ethanol business, the prices are going up, and the building of those facilities is actually collapsing in the U.S. I'm just wondering if that's going to happen in Canada, as well. Yet we didn't see any money for the forest industry investment.
Also, for Mr. Matters or Mr. Hanlon, with regard to the community trust fund that I think was given to the provinces with no strings attached, as you mentioned--and who knows where that could end up--has there been any uptake by your membership or communities, that you're aware of, with requests to get any of that money into the hands of workers for some much-needed assistance?
I'll just start with those two questions.