Natural Resources committee  Well the primary cause—and I know it was talked about in the earlier presentations—is that we're currently enjoying some fairly high lumber prices, record territories, in fact. To countries like Finland, whose industry is really built around pulp and paper, lumber is—as some com

Natural Resources committee  For dramatic reasons, I'd like to say yes, but in all honesty, the Europeans are being opportunistic because of the high prices. My suspicion is if markets normalize—whatever that means—that price advantage could very well disappear, but that does not take away from the fact that

Natural Resources committee  My obvious answer would have to be yes, if we can access that kind of marketplace duty-free. I say that with the backdrop of this industry, with support from FPI, from the provinces, and from the federal government, having done a wonderful job of opening up markets, particularly

Natural Resources committee  It's things like what was mentioned earlier, procurement policies so that we in Canada can incentivize more purchasing of our products. Even more important than that, it's getting our primary industry to diversify a little more. Maybe “lazy” was not the appropriate word, but the

Natural Resources committee  Unfortunately, we see it right across the country, to be honest with you. Particularly because of the economic downturn—I keep referring to 2006 to 2009—the forest industry has not had any great track record of having a few consecutive good years. Subsequently, employment was qui

Natural Resources committee  I think the long-term future, the bioenergy and the bioeconomy that the previous speakers were talking about, has tremendous opportunities, not just in northern Quebec but all through the northern boreal, where the forest type is such that a two-by-four or a two-by-six aren't the

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  Those procurement policies that favour wood construction and innovative...whether it's mass timber or whatever, are critical for two reasons. One that's obvious is that it creates jobs in Canada. One that's less obvious I learned about when I was over last week. We were trying to

Natural Resources committee  You're absolutely right, with respect to the exports. Most of the exports from the west coast are coming from private lands. Ironically, a lot of those private lands were initially held by public companies that had manufacturing facilities. They got access to those private lands

Natural Resources committee  Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of reasons. The first is obvious from the presentation that you got earlier, prior to this one. These guys, FPI, are doing phenomenal work. They are doing it largely because governments, provincial and federal, are helping them. I forget who

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  The claim by the industry on the west coast is that this particular fibre is expensive to access. The only way they can access other fibres, such as cedar, is to harvest a profile, which is absolutely a must for our industry to be sustainable. In harvesting a profile, they get ot

Natural Resources committee  The primary industry could certainly profit greatly and that would provide fibre for all these other wonderful products that are being talked about and under development, absolutely.

Natural Resources committee  It's critical to keep in mind that we ship as much lumber to China, so if we can do it and be cost competitive, then certainly we can do it with more logs than we're already doing it.

Natural Resources committee  When you reference it being harder for me, I'm assuming the question is for me as a member of the steelworkers. With our merger with the steelworkers, the steelworkers understood the significance of our role in Canada, and they made it crystal clear that we were going to be the v