It should be noted that it's ultimately our clients, the forestry industry, who pay the lumber taxes. However, it's no secret that this reduces the money supply for the entire sector. We heard Mr. Thériault talk about forestry contractors, such as truckers, people who provide services, as well as forest owners, who sell the wood. It's clear that this has an impact on all those people.
Allow me to explain one of the problems faced by private forest owners. Because of the mechanization of activities, they now harvest once every seven, eight, nine or ten years. Moving all the machinery takes an enormous amount of time and money. Forest owners don't live solely off the income from the harvest, which takes place once every nine years. It's a second income on top of their main income. However, in harvest years, they have a very high marginal tax rate because they have a high income that year, but the way the Canadian tax system works doesn't allow them to spread that income over time.
Forest producers have annual expenses. Every year, they have to maintain the roads, tend to their plants and invest in their forests, for example. For several years now, we've been proposing a silvicultural savings and investment plan, which would enable forest owners to deposit the income from their wood harvests into a tax-deferred savings account and withdraw money from it when they have to make such expenditures. That would enable forestry producers to generate income and spend money in the same year and ultimately reduce the marginal tax rate.
That would encourage more forest owners to invest private capital in their forests. We would then be able to generate more wood products at a lower cost for the industry as a whole. The forestry industry could source wood from forests located near the mills.