Natural Resources committee  Thank you.

Natural Resources committee  It is cyclical. Right now the spruce beetle numbers in Alberta are very low, so that's been positive. We are focusing primarily on mountain pine beetle. I want to jump in on MP Cannings' question on FireSmarting for a while. We have 13 communities that have nine projects, wort

Natural Resources committee  When it comes to COVID and our forestry sector in Alberta, production was slowed when COVID first hit, early in the new year, but once safety standards and new protocols and PPE were in place and physical distancing was done in mills, production ramped right up to full capacity.

Natural Resources committee  Disinformation is alive and well. It's something that we've seen from the Natural Resources Defense Council. They had a campaign that was picked up by our mainstream media earlier this year. I think it was called “The Issue with Tissue: How Americans are Flushing Forests Down the

Natural Resources committee  Not specifically. It is something that with our Champions of Agriculture and Forests campaign we initially went out and wanted to talk with industry and to partner with them to discredit a lot of this misinformation. If we could broaden that to make it a more national-level fight

Natural Resources committee  Just in an Alberta snapshot, we have about $200 million in royalties coming from timber dues from foresters directly to the provincial government. Then, with the transfers we have to the federal government, where over $20 billion more is going into Ottawa than is actually being t

Natural Resources committee  Early on, when we were elected, we had a forest jobs guarantee to try to grow our industry. One of the first things I did as minister was task the department to say that if we were to be true environmentalists and look at how we should actually manage our forests in a proper way,

Natural Resources committee  It's interesting...more added regulations that are put on our industry when we already have, I would say, the best standards in the world. I think you'd be very hard-pressed to find large forest sector industries in other countries around the world that actually have as high stan

Natural Resources committee  The clean fuel standard is something our industry has had concerns about here in Alberta. Originally, burnt wood not being allowed as feedstock was something that concerned them. There seem to be some positive moves on that, which is good from a smaller-scale level. One of the bi

Natural Resources committee  I apologize, but my French is a little rusty. Could you repeat that, please?

Natural Resources committee  In Alberta, the forestry sector is our third-largest resource sector. We have about 40,000 people who are employed every year within the sector. We want to ensure we can always promote the industry. I was still a little hazy on the translation, but I believe the overall questio

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here today. Obviously, as everyone here in the room knows, it's been a very difficult year economically, not just for the forestry sector, but for a lot of industries across Canada. Forestry is our third-largest resource sector