Evidence of meeting #23 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
President, KPD Consulting Ltd.
We're in a different [Inaudible—Editor].
However, it's fact of life if we want to have intensive livestocking, we need to figure out how to make that work on the planet.
You asked how we got started. People ask us that all the time, because again, manure isn't very glamorous. It came from growing up on a dairy farm and coming from that background and engineering schools and generally working our way through the industry and seeing there's a problem, but more specifically, there's a solution and a use.
When I sit around the table and I hear the word “waste” used all the time, I find that very disturbing because nothing is a waste on the planet if if's looked at from a—
President, KPD Consulting Ltd.
Yes.
When you ask about our solutions, a limited amount of resources are available to our livestock people and that resource is land, because that's how they typically deal with manure. They land apply it.
In the example of the Fraser Valley, the vast majority of the nutrients required there are imported from Alberta, the U.S., for feed, and they remain in the Fraser Valley in a very highly concentrated farming area and they need to be exported. We're getting out of balance there.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
I want to get to Professor Jessop as well, but what can we do to inspire more companies to look for things, as you did? Outside of funding or grants, is there a way that we set our own example of greening government? I don't know.
President, KPD Consulting Ltd.
The whole approach to this.... Our largest market, or our sustaining market, has been the United States purely because the economics are the driver in the United States. We need to take a product, like manure, and create revenue from it. We have to go back to the basics of what manure is made of, break it into those components. Some of the things we are looking at.... I just want to talk to this. The lab facility that Chris talked about, that has been resurrected in British Columbia, is key to this development. It's absolutely key. We had to leave Canada to develop this.
In doing so, we have been able to take manure, the larger fraction of it, and concentrate nutrients that can be put in the form of a granular fertilizer and export it anywhere in the world. More important, the larger part of animal manure is fibre and that fibre has an unbelievable resource, and that resource has to be unlocked. We are currently looking at our friends from Dow. We use them. Their products are critical in our process, polyacrylamides. Without polyacrylamides, this would never work. It's absolutely critical.
Is that the end run? No, we continue to look for more organic or natural methods to do that, but until we find them, we have to use what's available to us, used, like Professor Jessop said, in very minute quantities to achieve our goals.
The fibre can be generated, turned into organic fertilizer once the lignins are exposed. Once we crack the sugars, they can all be exposed.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Yes, quickly, please. I don't know what my time frame is.
Liberal
Operations Manager, KPD Consulting Ltd.
If we hold the producers of these non-point source emissions responsible, that will start to drive it. That is happening already through events in other places. If we go with a stick, we're going to do a lot of damage. If we can come up with intelligent programs that motivate the driving of these technologies.... Kerry has found great success in the United States. We've just been able to secure this equipment in Canada. Make it exciting. Show people there is a money train that's available in what's been seen as waste.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I found the witnesses' submissions to be fascinating, because they're really flowing into one narrative here, which was defined by Professor Jessop. He's talking about green chemistry. He's talking about how we define green. He defines it as being less hazardous than what was used before. I'm hearing that's the goal, especially with Messrs. Bush and Doyle.
Mr. Burt, Dow Chemical is probably among the largest users and producers of chemicals in Canada. Is that a safe statement?
Corporate Director, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
Yes.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
You have a significant presence in Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec. There was a witness who appeared before us earlier on CEPA who suggested that Ontario is among the most profligate of provinces and jurisdictions in North America when it comes to the emission of toxic and hazardous substances.
Do you concur with that assessment? Is Ontario really that bad?
Corporate Director, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Dow Chemical Canada Inc.
I believe you are referring to a comment that the Canadian Environmental Law Association made where they compared Ontario and California, and Ontario had a substantially larger order of magnitude in releases than California, which is a substantially larger jurisdiction.
The problem is that you are literally comparing Ontario's apples to California's oranges. You have a province here in Canada that is a high manufacturing industrial province and you're comparing it to a state in the United States which has very little manufacturing. It's basically an IT, high-tech state. It would be far more appropriate to compare Ontario to Michigan, New Jersey, Louisiana, states and jurisdictions that have a similar economy, that are manufacturing and industrial based.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you.
This is a question for Mr. Bush and Mr. Doyle.
In your last response to Mr. Fisher you started getting into the details of what your technology actually does. Mr. Bush, you didn't get into the biogas part of it. I won't get you to expand too much on that. Tell us a little bit about the challenge you had. You actually have implemented this technology in the United States in a very large dairy operation. How did that go? Why did you go to the United States?
President, KPD Consulting Ltd.
Our first project, actually, was implemented in Delta, British Columbia, and it was sponsored partly by Investment Agriculture. It enabled a 250-cow dairy to implement anaerobic digestion and bring off-farm materials to supplement that. Since then, they've been able to increase their herd size to virtually double, without increasing their footprint and actually reduce their impact environmentally by being able to concentrate nutrients and export them.
When we talk about manure, in the business we refer to it as nutrient management—phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. We want to control the deposits of that and the release.
The dairy that you're talking about in the United States is formerly known as Fair Oaks dairy. It's one of the most significant dairies in the United States. They milk about 15,000 cows, and the manure is brought to a central processing facility. All of that manure is managed within the scope of the dairy. It's done with a handful of people. What we were able to do is take the manure, once it was processed, extract the fibre, and develop a value chain with that separated, concentrate the nutrients through a technology that uses.... We're talking about separating particles in manure, particle size. In manure, there are basically two particle sizes: one millimetre and larger, which is 40% of it, and 25 microns and smaller, which is the other additional 40%. The large pieces can be separated, captured mechanically. Everything that's 25 microns and smaller needs to be chemically extracted, and that's where the use of polyacrylamides and other elements that we're looking to do....
That process creates a highly concentrated sludge that we further process into what we refer to as a cake. That cake is a solid material that would be contained...90% of the nutrients, and it would be something that you could pick up with a loader and move and land apply many miles away. It can be further processed to a granule, and that granule can be sold at Walmart, Home Depot, or anywhere that you would buy fertilizer.
Conservative
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
You mentioned that the appropriate approach to assessment would be a performance-based, regulatory approach that is based on a life-cycle analysis of different chemicals. Is that correct?
Professor, Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, As an Individual
Yes, that's right.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Are you suggesting that the current CEPA does not allow that to happen?
Professor, Department of Chemistry, Queen's University, As an Individual
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that—
