Thank you. Getting back to the budget, in Renewable Resources there are programs where reforestation of areas of logging activity is occurring. There are plans to do more logging and to set up more sawmills in the north where there are forests. The trees that are planted there are trees that are grown in the south. I don't know what kind of species they

are. Perhaps these are trees from the south. I don't know whether this department is looking at perhaps encouraging companies up here to do tree farming, where there are greenhouses to start these trees. Perhaps it might be good to do that up here. Something of that size should be reflected in the budget.

The other comment I would like to make is that a couple of years ago when these trees were brought up from the south and distributed, the excess was distributed to school kids. In my community, I noticed that there was larvae in the trees. In my area, we have a lot of bud worms and it never used to be like that before. I was wondering if the trees that are grown in the south and brought up here have worms and bugs in them that are infecting our trees up here. That is another reason why I think we should start our own industry up here, growing our own trees, rather than buying these small trees from the south. This is one of the things I would like to see in the Renewable Resource budget.

A number of us have been raising our voices here about the fur industry. We want to get into the fur industry in a big way. We are faced with a world-wide movement to ban furs, and they gave us a one-year extension, but that one year is going to be used up fairly quickly. We don't know what the future is like and we still have a lot of trappers up here. I said that I recognized the furs caught by our trappers are top quality furs, exclusive furs, and that we should be doing something to promote that. The way to promote that is to, perhaps, look at fixing the furs up here ourselves and even auctioning them up here.

In order to do that, you would probably have to build a facility of some sort up here to do that, and invite people who buy furs up here, rather than sending our furs down to auctions down south and losing total control of prices for our fur. Maybe the department is looking at that, but that is one thing that should be in our budget. That is something we should be dealing with and considering in the budget of this department. It may cost some money upfront, but in the long run, I think it will pay off and it will mark the beginning of a good fur industry in the north.

These are some questions the Minister can answer, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.