Thank you very much.
I wanted to say to the folks from James and Elk Lake that my colleague Charlie Angus sends his greetings, as he couldn't be here this morning.
It seems to me that we have a fundamental issue here on a community level that we need to address in a major way if we're going to respond to some of the concerns that you put on the table today. Certainly I've been in many communities across northern Ontario over the last few months, talking to leaders of industry and political and union leaders as they look desperately for an answer. These folks have made investments over a number of years, both in their work and in buying homes, and some of them have started up small businesses—and overnight, these are worthless. They are wondering where they should go and what they should do and if retraining will actually do anything for them, and all the rest of that. I'm sure it's the same in New Brunswick and eastern Canada. Communities are desperately looking for anything that will give them some hope.
I know that different levels of government are coming forward with proposals. There's the billion dollars talked about at the federal level. The provincial government has come forward with a number of initiatives on energy, and there's money out there for new technology—although for a company that is down and done, new technology isn't going to help much, although I guess an investment in upgrading for the future would be good.
I know there are some people, particularly from northwestern Ontario and within the union movement, the CEP, who have called for a summit on forestry so that we can get all of the players around the table and find a way to coordinate efforts and make sure that we're not working at cross-purposes, or to figure out a way to maybe even stack some of these, so that we can finally get something that's substantial enough to make a difference. There's also a call out by folks for a national forestry strategy.
Maybe you could respond to both of those ideas or requests that I'm hearing, and let us know what you think about the summit and the strategy.