Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon and thanks to the committee for the invitation to come forward today as a witness. Forest renewal and the future of one of Canada's oldest industries is of great interest to the group I'm here representing today, MLTC Resource Development. ML

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Maybe I'll work backwards in terms of the employment connection.

Natural Resources committee  We have gone through a bit of an occurrence that's common in Saskatchewan now where there is a labour shortage. We have a lot of skilled trades shortages, and there is also this extremely high unemployment rate with aboriginal people, which we're also familiar with. The Meadow

Natural Resources committee  Well, we have lots of under-25-year-olds. They have specific desires in life in terms of what they look for, so we've been pretty good at trying to help them and support them. We have a unionized environment as well so it's working with the union on top of that to adapt some ne

Natural Resources committee  If you compare us to other forest companies in Saskatchewan, we have by far the highest aboriginal employment. The normal would be perhaps 5% or 10% whereas we're at 75%. We're owned by first nations so there is going to be some strong policy around making sure we put emphasis on

Natural Resources committee  What is it like to rent an apartment, build a lifestyle, get a family established, and put down roots? That's not really common for a lot of young people so we need to help them understand those things. When we strengthen those things they become long-term, stable employees and c

Natural Resources committee  Northern Career Quest, totally.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, it's a Saskatchewan-specific program. I know that other provinces have looked at it. It's been very successful. There are some models in Alberta and B.C. that we're looking at as well that are specific to forestry, but we really like Northern Career quest. It's great.

Natural Resources committee  There are two views on this one. If you make any minor changes at all, then the U.S. is going to jump all over it and want to open the whole thing up for massive renegotiation. So our Canadian negotiators are always hesitant to try to change anything and hope that the status quo

Natural Resources committee  IFIT has been mentioned, and that would be a great one. We've been interested in applying for that particularly related to our bioenergy initiatives because they are somewhat cutting edge, and when you can't attract funding, you're typically always defaulting to lower technology

Natural Resources committee  We work with a wide range of federal and provincial programs, but mostly federal ones. FPInnovations is a huge partner and a recipient of a lot of federal funding. The aboriginal forestry initiative has been an ongoing partner in many ways. For example, when we need to apply a b

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  As I mentioned earlier—at least in Saskatchewan, and we do see it across the country—you typically saw a really big company owning the forest industry. Weyerhaeuser was the dominant investor in Saskatchewan and they owned the sawmills and the pulp mill. It was this idea that they

Natural Resources committee  The softwood lumber agreement, which is managed by the department of international trade, has an organization that negotiates with the U.S. on the terms of the agreement, and Canada is divided into many different regions. Saskatchewan is part of the eastern Canadian region; Alber

Natural Resources committee  There is a way to do it.