Thank you, members of the committee and my colleagues, for being here today.
On behalf of my team at FPAC, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity.
Just to level set everyone, we are the voice of Canada's wood, pulp, and paper producers nationally and internationally, and increasingly of companies that are getting into the bioeconomy game and getting into power production as well. We generate $67 billion annually and represent 12% of Canada's manufacturing GDP. Our industry is one of Canada's largest employers, operating in some 600 forest-dependent communities across the country from coast to coast, and employing 230,000 Canadians. There is a 3:1 ratio in terms of indirect jobs for about one million Canadians.
One of the benefits of my job is that I travel the country and go to communities like Vernon, B.C.; Peace River, Alberta; Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec; and Kenora, Ontario. These are very well-paying jobs in communities that really need them.
Given that we operate primarily in rural and northern communities, we also work very closely with some 80% of indigenous peoples in Canada. We're one of the largest employers of indigenous peoples. We work with some 1,400 indigenous businesses across the country. My board has identified as a priority over the next few years to really increase our engagement and support with our indigenous government partners and communities.
To maintain our industry's strong position, our market position in the world, is important if we want to continue to maximize our contribution on economic growth for our workers, businesses, and communities, and continue to drive the environmental and recreational benefits that come with our actively and sustainably managed forests.
We have a number of recommendations in our pre-budget submissions, but understanding that I have only five minutes today, I'll hit on just two of them for the committee.
Number one is around the issue of trade and growing Canada's market access around the world. Trade is a big deal these days on a number of fronts—with TPP coming back onto the table, with our NAFTA negotiations, and with the pursuit of a free trade agreement with China—and we feel we have a real opportunity in terms of marketing the brand “Canada” because of the reputation of our industry has for being sustainable.
I want to give a shout-out to the international trade department and our trade commissioners around the world, who are critical to supporting our efforts to develop and expand new markets for wood, pulp, and paper, and, increasingly, biomaterials. We appreciate their work; it's very valuable to us.
Beyond quality, as I said, one of the key selling points of our products is sustainability. In a global study released last month by NEPCon with the support of the Forest Stewardship Council, Canada's forest management framework was again touted as one of the best in the world. This can be attributed to our strong legislative and regulatory regimes both federally and provincially; the fact that we have the most third-party certified forests in the world, which are independently audited and certified; and the way we manage for multiple values when we're planning a harvest, from species considerations to wetlands preservation to promoting watershed health, and mitigating carbon.
The second piece I want to touch on today is linked to our climate change opportunity. We're one of the few industries that were on board with the Kyoto Protocol many, many years ago, so we call ourselves “Canada's greenest workforce”. We agree with Minister Carr, who earlier today at a conference in town said that Canada can't achieve its climate change goals without its forest sector.
Last year, we launched our “30 by 30” climate change challenge, a plan to remove three megatonnes of carbon a year from our atmosphere by 2030. That's the equivalent of taking six million cars off the road. We're going to get there by delivering on a number of initiatives in our forests, at our mills, and along our supply chains, and through broadening the reach of the carbon-storing products that we make. We're going to start reporting on our progress on this goal in 2019.
Core to this effort is the plan to build more with wood and to assess and implement new approaches to maximizing the role of our forests in the fight against climate change.
On the building side, reThink Wood is a very successful initiative in the U.S. that has been established to support the expansion of building with wood to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and realize significant benefits for the environment and the economy. A modest investment of $600,000 in the Canadian edition of the reThink Wood program would allow us to leverage an existing $2.4 million program and support its expansion into Canada.
For folks around the table from B.C., the fires that have ravaged our forests have caused over one million hectares in loss already. We've seen the pine beetle sweep through B.C. into Alberta. We are seeing the real effects of climate change in our forests, so we're calling on the government to support us by assessing the mitigation and adaptation practices feasible in different regions across Canada. We have an opportunity to share delivery models and approaches from other jurisdictions that have successful mitigation practices.
In closing, the budget presents an opportunity for our sector, but even more importantly, we need your help between those budget cycles.
Our sector alone is currently caught in the middle of a number of trade disputes, softwood lumber being the most prominent. We're facing increased pressures from governments to manage for species at risk, and we're preparing for a host of new policies and programs related to carbon.
We're a sector that prides itself on our approach to delivering on both environmental and economic goals, and we will always support government efforts that are focused on balancing the environment and the economy.
As we look to the future, it's critical that cumulative impacts of well-intended government initiatives be closely evaluated. We look forward to working with the government in partnership.
Thanks for the opportunity. I will be happy to answer any questions later on.