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, where we are doing sustainable harvest and trying to reduce fire risk as well as pest risks—mountain pine beetle spread and areas that are very susceptible to massive forest fires—and if we were to go out and just properly manage our forests, what would our annual allowable cut level be? They crunched the numbers and found it to be 33% higher than it currently was. About 13% of that 33%—so about a third—was something that we in Agriculture and Forestry knew we could do within the department. We've already initiated that. The remaining 20% of that 33% does come from federal regulations as well as environmental regulations.
We are looking at how we can increase our annual allowable cut in a sustainable way, as true foresters and environmentalists would, to make sure that we can have healthy, sustainable forests in Alberta for generations to come.