Mr. Chairman, the point I am trying to make here is on public lands that have forest on it, anybody harvesting the forest would pay to the government, a certain fee to harvest that forest. Therefore, it stands to reason that the government would in fact benefit, to some degree, from the timber, but on private land, this government does not stand to gain anything. The total forest product for forest would go to the ownership of private groups. It stands to reason then that this government is giving money to fight fires on public land to protect public interests. That is why I bring up the question of whether or not this government has the mandate to fight forest fires to protect private interest.

I also bring this question up in relation to that area of the forest that is burnt on private land and whether or not we pay to reforest that land. I do not know why we would pay to reforest the land since we do not benefit from the harvesting, only the private group would. That is the line of my questioning, Mr. Chairman. The second part of the question obviously would be, do we have reforesting projects on private land?