Industry committee  I would like to jump in on this. Comparing our attitude toward our currency to, say, that of the U.S. or Europe I think is worthwhile. Certainly the head of the European Central Bank was very clear that extreme currency fluctuation undermines the economy. The German currency went

Industry committee  Certainly there's a strong argument to be made that the rapid rise of oil prices, allowing the dollar to be driven up that way, creates a huge risk to the rest of the economy. Anybody who's watched markets over the long term knows that what goes up comes down. It feels as though

Industry committee  No answer, okay

Industry committee  It's 820,000 jobs, it's the largest employer of aboriginal Canadians, and it's the sole employer of 300 towns. I don't think any member of Parliament needs to be convinced this is urgent or that giving this up through inaction would simply be irresponsible. I don't think there's

Industry committee  Thank you, and thank you for inviting us. You probably don't understand how important to us it is that you take a chance to hear us, or how much we depend upon your attention and how much we appreciate it. The impact of the dollar on the forest industry is not hard to calculate

Finance committee  We strongly support free trade in all directions. There are no tariffs on forest products coming into Canada, there are tariffs going out to some of our customers, and we strongly support the government in acting strongly anywhere where there is a possibility of opening up the ch

Finance committee  It would be very small. We are the world's most successful forest products exporting nation. No one else exports like Canada does into global markets. We're almost double our nearest competitor, which is the U.S., and as much as Finland and Sweden combined. There's very little co

Finance committee  Due diligence is a wonderful thing as long as it leads to action in the end. We certainly respect the due diligence and doing the research as long as we see action at the end. And you have to understand that the towns that depend upon these industries going through transformati

Finance committee  I'll just check with my chief economist. We're investing $4 billion a year? So the money is going in. The way it works is that the tax credits accumulate so investments from the past can be recognized. They would be recognized at the time of profitability. We're saying recognize

Finance committee  I certainly won't argue with doing what's right, but we also have to do what's urgent. Put differently, we have to do what's right urgently. Are we going to urge you to do stuff that's short-term easy and long-term stupid? No, we don't want that. We don't want subsidies. We don't

Finance committee  On aboriginal employees, even more interestingly, we do business with about 1,600 aboriginal-owned businesses. So in addition to them being a large part of our labour force, there's a lot of business-to-business activity, and it's very successful. The industry is going to be dif

Finance committee  We agree with you completely. This is very urgent; it cannot wait. It's simply because people are deciding today where to invest. The decisions are being made day by day: is Canada a place to put your money, or should it be put in mills in the south? So the faster we act on the

Finance committee  The stuff that's making it really hard is the housing crisis, the export taxes or quotas on softwood, the pine beetle eating our wood. It has been a real piling on of crises. But all the things we could have done to survive all those were ripped away from us with a 40% cost incre

Finance committee  When we have spoken with the finance minister, the industry minister, and the Minister of Natural Resources, they have expressed an informed understanding of our situation and a real interest, even though they're not listening. We have great confidence that the government will do

Finance committee  Most of the increase in demand is coming from the rapidly growing economies in Asia. There's increased demand in South America as well. India, China, Indonesia—all those places are driving most of the demands. The lumber business is in a cyclical decline in North America, but it