Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I'd like to thank Mario Simard for making our appearance before the Standing Committee on Natural Resources a little easier.
For people who aren't familiar with the Consortium de recherche et innovations en bioprocédés industriels au Québec, or CRIBIQ, I'll say that it's a consortium that brings together industrial partners and public research centres. Our main mandate is to financially support the industrial research that mobilizes these businesses and research centres, and to promote innovation among producers and processors of bio-sourced products from forest biomass.
CRIBIQ currently has a portfolio of 300 businesses and financing of approximately $145 million, and about 40% of our investments are related to forest biomass development.
With regard to today's topic, the bio-economy and its role in economic recovery, we are convinced that industrial sectors linked to the bio-economy can play a major role. It's an important link in the industrial and economic recovery in a post-pandemic context.
We need only think of the revitalization of resource regions or Canada's economic sovereignty. Everyone knows that at the beginning of the pandemic, we were faced with a shortage of a number of products, including very advanced materials used in the manufacture of many products needed in the health sector or hygiene products, among others.
So I think that bioproducts can play a fundamental role, as the bio-economy promotes the ecological footprint. Earlier, we talked about the life cycle issue. In most of the projects we've funded, the life cycle analysis has shown clearly that the development of these bioproducts can play an important role in reducing waste and greenhouse gases, in addition to limiting the relocation of high value-added products, since most of the jobs associated with bioproducts must be close to biosources.
We want to take advantage of this forum to offer some food for thought that can strengthen the role of the bio-economy in Canada's post-pandemic recovery.
I'll turn things over to my colleague and co-founder of CRIBIQ, Laurent Roger Bernier, to talk about our three recommendations.