Natural Resources committee  I would draw a distinction in the British Columbian context between our interior forest industry and our coastal forest industry. As I'm sure the committee knows, we have a dreadful problem with the mountain pine beetle having significantly reduced the economic timber supply at l

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Absolutely the most significant new product, here on the west coast at least, is cross laminated timber. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It is a technology and product line that has been in place in Europe for a number of years. It has just now come into No

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I'm a huge fan of FPInnovations, which has world-class research and development facilities on the west coast and also in Quebec. It has done a lot of work, at a lab scale, in investigating the concept of creating a biorefinery approach to using that input material to

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I think that's a very important line of inquiry. In the business model, the pulp and paper sector here, in a sense, is intimately melded with the solid wood sector. Our pulp and paper mills rely overwhelmingly on chips, sawdust, shavings, and so on, from the sawmill s

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much. I'll make a note of that.

Natural Resources committee  The big success in China has been our lumber, and I think we've peaked out on the volume from the B.C. industry, or at least from western Canada, because a certain amount goes into China from Alberta as well. I think we've peaked out in volume, and now we are shifting our focus t

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for that question. It's important to always remember that a wide array of forest products lend themselves to different applications in different competitive circumstances around the world. The China effort was focused on primary lumber, primarily from our interior ind

Natural Resources committee  Yes, technology in the sense of building systems in China.... The big spend in China has been introducing North American technology for building with wood, as opposed to using it for upholstered furniture or crates or industrial packaging or something. That's sophisticated techno

Natural Resources committee  It's a very subjective matter, I would say. I hearken back to an experience I had maybe 15 years ago trying to define a population of value-added firms in the province—and you're right, it proved to be very difficult—to see who is adding value through a complicated distribution c

Natural Resources committee  The value-added arena is very complex. I guess I can illustrate that by pointing to the major trade association that represents the broad spectrum of value-added manufacturers in British Columbia. It's an organization called BC Wood Specialties Group. It's very well-established.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to offer some input today. I'd like to explain the context for my involvement in this particular arena and then offer you some rather personal editorial comments on the scope of the committee's work. The terms