Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the forest fire management, one of the things that we seem to spend a lot of time and effort and money fighting fires, but with a lot of these forest resources we have, we are not really using them as a product where we can develop a lot of our own infrastructures in the communities. We are importing a lot of lumber materials from southern Canada. We do have timber resources here in the north. I would like to ask the Minister a question in regard to the forest management area. If you look at the traditional communities which originate up and down the Mackenzie valley, a lot of them had some sort of a sawmill operation. Traditionally in the past, in my riding there were sawmills in Aklavik, Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic where at one time these were thriving businesses, in which people built the communities with raw materials from the local surrounding area in regard to cutting their own timber locally and constructing a lot of the old buildings that were built one time in the communities. We seem to have become so dependent on southern resources that we do not use the timber that presently exists in a lot of our regions, where at one time it generated a lot of jobs where a lot of people were able to supply the sawmills with raw materials such as logs.

One thing I see lacking in the north is we have to rehash that industry to where it was at one time. If we go back in history, we will realize a lot of these communities were based on building a lot of their infrastructure by the raw materials in the area. Has the Minister looked at the possibility of investing in local sawmills that communities can start developing there own wood products so that they can go back to the whole notion of constructing and building your own houses with the materials that are around the communities?