Madam Chair, with the recent opening of the Vancouver pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010, Canadian expertise in wood construction is now on display for the world to see. The Vancouver pavilion significantly is located in the urban best practices theme of Shanghai Expo 2010. The building's interior will serve as an exhibition space. The first floor features the city of Vancouver, while the second floor is devoted to consumer focused displays, promoting wood as a natural, sustainable building product and wood frame construction as energy efficient and safe.
Importantly, the second floor display area and third floor meeting rooms will be used to host Chinese developers, engineers, architects and government officials as part of the program to market Canadian wood products and advance wood technology in China.
With all of this put together, the Vancouver pavilion in China provides the unique opportunity to showcase Canadian wood products and wood construction techniques to an international audience.
Would the Minister of Natural Resources tell us how much the government has invested in the Vancouver pavilion and what it hopes to achieve with that?