Natural Resources committee  The pine beetle is 85% eradicated? I didn't realize that. Is that in B.C.?

Natural Resources committee  I don't think that necessarily everything has to be a super mill on all scales; it depends on the product. Clearly you need to be of a certain scale in some products, but in the case of the lumber business, maybe a medium-sized mill is more efficient because of the resource, the

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. It's not one size fits all.

Natural Resources committee  It's a complex business, a complex country from that point of view. There are differences, and they need to be recognized.

Natural Resources committee  Fix the tax system. Get the depreciation right, quick.

Natural Resources committee  No. Look, with biomass you could burn all the trees in Canada trying to make any amount of electricity. This is an add-on. It's a competitive advantage. We shouldn't waste a scrap in the forest. We should burn it for biomass. If we can turn it into biofuels, that's a good add-on

Natural Resources committee  Look, we're a small company. New Brunswick, the whole province, makes less than 0.5% of the world's forest products business. We're part of that, so put it in context. Yet we have patents pending for tree research. We're planting more trees than anybody in Canada, certainly on a

Natural Resources committee  The federal regulations from the forestry perspective are really driven around the big environmental issues--water, air, and so on. In order to understand where we're going to go vis-à-vis our outputs on air emissions and Kyoto, and what all this is going to mean to us, we need c

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Allen, there are two parts. Maybe we're a little unusual. I guess we are in regard to reinvestment. It has to do with what Mr. Matters was saying about closing down the facility and exporting the logs. Some other folks have talked about small and medium entrepreneurs. This ge

Natural Resources committee  Excuse me. I missed something in the translation. I'm sorry about that.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not up to speed totally on what the programs are for the oil industries out west, but the oil activity in Alberta is concentrated in one small part of Canada. Forest products are spread across the country, virtually in every province and in thousands of small communities. Sh

Natural Resources committee  As a businessman, given the state of the oil business and the state of the forest products business, I think we should get a great deal more than the oil business, because we have a lot bigger troubles, so we'd encourage the federal government to be very generous. Look, research

Natural Resources committee  We're getting into the tax business, so it can get very complicated very quickly. There are two parts to it. On the research side, just pure research, I think that can be a refund. If they're not paying taxes, maybe it's a direct contribution back to the company, if they're doi

Natural Resources committee  Yes, because grants, or whatever you want to call them, get very messy very quickly. We need very good technology today. You're not going to make the quality and productivity standards you need with old junk. We should be bold about it. We fiddle around the edges. We go for a ye

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate the invitation to be here with you this morning to express our views concerning the forest products business here in Canada. For those of you who don't know anything about J.D. Irving Limited, our head office is based in Saint Jo