Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before we begin, I want to thank the witnesses for being with us.
I'm very happy, too, to talk about forests. Although I am the member for Sudbury, a mining town, I come from Kapuskasing, a pulp and paper and forestry town. My father worked at the Spruce Falls mill for 40 years as a welder. My grandfather helped build the mill in the 1920s and 1930s. For a long time we exported our paper to be used in the daily newspaper The New York Times, which we were very proud of.
My whole family worked in forestry. I'm very happy to talk about it. I am a forest man. I was able to benefit from the good jobs it created. Unlike my father, I was able to go to university, thanks to the good jobs in the industry.
Mr. Simard talked about investments, and I'd like to get back to that. From his point of view, it is a lack of investment. Ms. MacNeil, you talked about the investments our government has made in the forestry sector over the last four years. There is the softwood lumber action plan. We are talking about $900 million, $250 million in investments in the 2019 federal budget and another $100 million in 2018. This means that about $1.2 billion has been invested in the sector, which is a lot.
We recognize, however, that there are difficulties. That is clear.
You mentioned that we are now at a crossroads, which has implications for the sector in terms of the potential for bioproducts and the bioeconomy, and the role they could play.
I've seen that with my own eyes. When I went to Chibougamau and Chapais in Quebec, I saw the investments there and how that has transformed.... But we're also seeing all of this potential out there in this billion-dollar economy that is waiting to... and we're seeing that the transition is hard to do.
Maybe, with your expertise and what you hear.... The challenge is with the adoption. FPInnovations is doing amazing work. There's a ton of research going on, and we are world leaders in Canada.
As to the adoption of that in our commercial world, what are the impediments that we could look at in public policy as we prepare our report to Parliament? What can we recommend to Parliament?