Evidence of meeting #59 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fibre.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Conservative
Pat Perkins Conservative Whitby—Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much.
It was with respect to the proprietary specialty fibre and the specialty pulps and the new programs that you're in the midst of announcing, versus what's going on with bamboo at the other end of the world, and how their shorter fibres are being produced and what they're being turned into, in terms of fabrics and that sort of thing.
5 p.m.
Director of Research and Development, Pulp and Paper Division, Domtar Inc.
I wouldn't call myself an expert in bamboo, but relative to specialty fibres and going up the value chain, there's actually been an explosion of activity in this area globally in the research community. We can start, for example, with nanofibrillated cellulose, crystalline nanocellulose—these are tiny particles—and then microcrystalline cellulose. There's a scale of different types of modified and specialty fibres. There's been quite a lot of development and activity in that area. We're very excited about the fact that we feel we have a big jump on commercialization of this technology, which was developed in Canada and the United States. We will go to full commercialization in the Dryden mill with this sponsored project.
We'll see where it lands, but our view of this is that we'll be able to produce even better pulp than what we're producing out of Dryden right now, something that might go into non-traditional applications such as reinforced fibre materials and extending the functionality of the northern bleached softwood kraft, which is arguably the best fibre in the world already. This is an example of that first theme of our improving an existing product, which happens to be the best in the world, which gives us a competitive advantage. We are improving it further still and then using that as a platform from which to look at different markets where we could use this new material.
5 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you very much to all of the witnesses today for coming and for giving us some information that will be very helpful in our study.
Thank you very much to Dr. Marcoccia, Mr. Arsenault, Dr. Mangin, and Dr. Beauregard.
We will suspend the meeting for just a minute while we go in camera and then come back to a discussion of our report.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
