Natural Resources committee  As I said earlier, businesses need certainty in order to continue to operate and anything the federal government can do to support forestry.... The other side of the things we haven't talked a lot about is there is some misinformation that takes place and anything the federal and provincial governments can do to correct that information would help.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you.

Natural Resources committee  I should maybe let Joe answer that one. He's had more experience in actually dealing with the wood on a day-to-day basis. On the poplar, I know we have a mill down in Mr. Rafferty's riding, a place called Barwick. They use a lot of poplar down there. Joe.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. For one reason or another, parks and so on, it's not accessible.

Natural Resources committee  You have to remember that, especially in the province of Ontario, they have some of the most rigid forest standards of anywhere in Canada. I think around 40% of the forests in Ontario have been certified. A third party group audits the forest, and so on. This all helps to protect the forest.

Natural Resources committee  In my view, there aren't quite as many people working at the OPG plant now as there were when the coal-fired plant was operating. We do have the operation in forestry and the wood pellets making up for it. From that point of view, it's roughly the same, but as you know, the OPG jobs are good-paying jobs.

Natural Resources committee  In relation to the Rentech plant in Atikokan, which produces pellets, part of their market is over in the United Kingdom. They ship pellets by rail to Quebec City, and then load them on boats and take them over to Great Britain. That's one opportunity. There's another opportunity we think may be out there.

Natural Resources committee  I just wanted to pass out this information about the caribou.

Natural Resources committee  I know a few years back we were looking at a veneer plant in Atikokan, and in the end we didn't make much headway because there seemed to be very little appetite in Canada for that at that particular time. I know our economic development officer was dealing with somebody, I think out in the state of Washington, and I think that opportunity might still be there if there were some more impetus to try to move forward in that regard.

Natural Resources committee  Both the federal and the provincial governments have come out with studies, and they're suggesting that if some more land isn't set aside for the caribou, then the caribou will suffer. The problem with that is, when you take the land away, that's wood, part of the boreal forest.

Natural Resources committee  Like the item that I referred to earlier, and I'll leave you a copy of it, I don't think it's based on sound science. This is just one example, but we hear that quite a lot in the the northwest. Quite often where the wood has been cut and harvested, the caribou are present. You see the caribou there.

Natural Resources committee  If I were in the federal government, I'd be looking very closely at those studies, and I'd certainly do everything I could to not set aside more land for the caribou at the expense of jobs for the forestry companies. The forestry companies are providing the jobs in our communities, and we need those jobs.

Natural Resources committee  I know for a fact that, for example, it has the most up-to-date planer as part of it. They are actually going to truck the wood from Ignace to Atikokan, which is about 145 kilometres one way, to be planed in Atikokan. I don't know all the details of the mill itself, but we've been told it's state of the art and it's the most modern one probably in Canada.

Natural Resources committee  In terms of the story that Joe was talking about with that mill in Atikokan, what happened was that it was a particleboard plant and in 2008 with the downturn in the economy, it went bankrupt. The town took a chance; we took it over and sold it to a gentleman who was a great businessman in Thunder Bay, but he had to turn around and sell it because he was spending his own money and the banks wouldn't give him the money to move forward on upgrading it to a pelletizing plant because the banks weren't convinced that forestry was good.

Natural Resources committee  I guess the thing is that we're working at it as partners with the first nations. The first nations need jobs and need the economy just like we do, and they're very interested in that. When Resolute and the first nations signed the memorandum of understanding back on February 11 in Thunder Bay, it was a great day.