I'm very familiar with the problems of RCM Antoine-Labelle because I come from Mont-Laurier. The forest industry has always gone through economic cycles. This isn't the first; we've been living through them for 150 years. However, we've never experienced one that was both so long and so serious. Businesses have survived other economic cycles in the past. The forest industry is an industry of fighters. People will persist because they think the crisis will pass. However, people are realizing that they've made virtually no money in the past year and a half and that they'll be making nothing in the next year and a half. And yet we're talking about businesses that are efficient. They think they won't survive another year and a half and that they won't benefit from the recovery if they continue losing money every day, on every shipment that leaves the plant. They may think that one way of getting through it is to shut down immediately and wait for the recovery. However, the first problem they'll then have to face is the problem of rehiring the labour force. An adjustment program for older workers would be one way for them to get by.
You have to understand that an unskilled 55-year-old worker probably won't go anywhere else. However, a young skilled worker 25 years of age who has a family may go elsewhere because the employment rate is lower and the Canadian economy is doing well in general. As a result, the young worker will find work. That labour force will be lacking when the recovery occurs. An adjustment program for older workers could therefore definitely help ensure a resumption in forest industry activities, particularly in outlying and semi-remote regions such as the RCM Antoine-Labelle or RCM Hautes-Laurentides because young workers only have a two-hour drive to the big city to find a job and move for good.