Finance committee  If I may, I will add one thing. There is something that's fairly simple to understand in the forest and paper industry, when you are a stakeholder in the industry. We have talked a lot about integration—you close three plants and leave one open, and because it's important, it wi

Finance committee  I often say we are at the end of a winding road, in the middle of nowhere. In terms of our project, we are not going to sell our product in the United States. We are going to sell it elsewhere. If we have succeeded in doing it incur town, with very little assistance, I really bel

Finance committee  We are a small isolated community that has a population of about 3,300. In Lebel-sur-Quévillon and the surrounding area, 1,000 jobs were lost in the forest industry. You can see the size of the disaster. Some people chose to stay in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, but obviously most people

Finance committee  We would have to have financial assistance of various kinds, loan guarantees. Is it possible to get assistance when... You are a government and you administer public money. For example, our project would create 300 very well-paid jobs. There would be payback, as the jargon goes.

Finance committee  Yes, we've seen them passing by, and we would liked them to stop in Lebel-sur-Quévillon. We have heard about these programs. I think we are probably, at least in Quebec, the most glaring example of what the crisis in the forest industry means. Five years after the closings, we ha

Finance committee  Yes, we have made an offer to buy the plant. We want to do things differently from what was done before. If we want to continue doing what was done in the paper industry in recent decades, we can get assistance. However, if we do things the same way, we are going to end up in the

Finance committee  No. In 2005, when the plant closing was announced, the people applied for employment insurance. They were told they could not receive employment insurance benefits because they were locked out. The closing occurred during collective bargaining. Even the employer said it was not a

Finance committee  Good morning. My name is Gérald Lemoyne and I am the mayor of the town of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, a one-industry forestry town that has been hit by the forestry crisis. This morning, I will tell you what it means, in real life, to live through a crisis like the one that has hit us.