Prepared by Ken McCulloch and Fred Haavisto.

The following are thoughts and ideas; not in any order of importance. Emphasis in the following is on wood and timber products, but somewhat similar could apply to steel.

• Use all the natural resources sustainably; highest potential value from raw products.

• Need more value-addedness to primary products – why are we shipping out raw materials, or minimally processed products?

• There are too many ways around the legislation.

• Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma are strategically located to access markets in the US Lake States and mid-west.

• Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma could be the center of value-added forest and steel products from Northeastern Ontario; thus creating varied meaningful and high-paying employment opportunities.

• There is a huge potential for Biomass energy – especially from unused and undesirable woody biomass (forest biofibre).

• There are major constraints in the “Forest Land Tenure” system in Ontario – need more local control for management, harvesting, marketing, etc.

• Lack of free-thinking and idea-germination/incubation – constrained by past history and people with vested interests in the status quo.

• Existing workers are struggling, hence major change and opportunities needed.

• How do we get local people to work together? Pre-existing paradigms must be examined and challenged – e.g. why do logs and lumber need have to be nominally 8’ long minimum when prime grade materials are available from short pieces?

• Wood flooring can be made from short pieces – much unused timber as white birch.

• Current tenure system does not allow ready access to Crown Land timber resources,.

• Current Gov’t constraints prevent access to natural resources for small entrepreneurs even though desired resources not being used; hence survival impossible, whereas potential for expansion and additional employment

• (Tenure system therefore needs change).

• Agencies that are in place to facilitate development seem to be constrained by their own agendas.

• We should be importing proven technologies from countries with a long history of sustainable resource management and use: e.g. Finland has 40% of the land area of Ontario and yet annually harvest 2X the timber. Have much value-added secondary processing that is exported to Europe, and even some to North America.

We need to move towards community-based natural resource management instead of retaining the current resource tenure system, or any facsimile of it. Control stays in the community, where local people intimately know what their and their ecosystem needs, and creates meaningful employment opportunities that remain in the community. The community dictates the products and the markets. – Sustainable ecosystems ensure sustainable communities, and sustainable families – no boom and bust.