Natural Resources committee  As I said, we support those Community Futures organizations. Our spending on that represents something in the order of just shy of 14% of our overall budget. There's an additional 14% of our overall project funding that has gone to rural as opposed to urban communities. Are we th

Natural Resources committee  We have also funded, through FPInnovations, as my colleague from CED-Q has mentioned, a series of indigenous forestry training projects, and they fan out across the province in order to help indigenous businesses in the forest sector adapt to market conditions, introduce new tech

Natural Resources committee  We're extremely aware of the pressures that the Community Futures organizations are under just as a result of inflation over the past 10 years or so. At Western Diversification, we've had some ups and downs in our funding over that 10-year period as well. For example, the staff

Natural Resources committee  The demand is going way up in situations like this. We have put in place some interesting programming that Community Futures is actually delivering on our behalf. I mentioned the wildfires initiative in 2017-18, which is just finishing up now. We've made other initiatives avai

Natural Resources committee  In fact, it is something we are looking at. We are in discussions with both Natural Resources Canada and the provincial government about some initiatives for creating a centre for innovation in the fighting of wildfires. B.C. has an almost unique situation in the world to be a t

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely, those are the kinds of projects we like to hear about. We are oversubscribed. WD is traditionally eight to ten times oversubscribed—

Natural Resources committee  —so about eight or nine of every ten people who come to our door we end up not being able to assist.

Natural Resources committee  If I have this right, the $867 million is a reference to the softwood lumber action plan that the Government of Canada put in place.

Natural Resources committee  Unfortunately, I'm not in a great position to speak to that since our department is not actually involved in the delivery of that $867 million. Representatives from Natural Resources Canada were here the other day, and Global Affairs Canada is more closely involved—

Natural Resources committee  Pardon me?

Natural Resources committee  The softwood lumber action plan does not involve funding for Western Diversification.

Natural Resources committee  I mentioned the interdepartmental, intergovernmental committee that we are a part of, as are the other regional development agencies. It's an exercise that's been struck recently to bring to bear the full resources of the federal government and coordinate them with the resources

Natural Resources committee  Businesses are aware; we have a pretty active communications program in Western Economic Diversification. You can get a first cut at a lot of our services by going to our website and applying for our programming in that fashion. It often takes more than that, particularly when yo

Natural Resources committee  That business scale-up and productivity program is one where there is an intake process, a call that's open now. That is one where you can go to our website and access the information required in order to submit an application. The program provides repayable contributions, as w

Natural Resources committee  I should emphasize that we have been working hard on the community resilience initiative since January. If it's successful, it would come under our community economic development stream. Typically, our project development process takes a number of months. We are in discussion wit