Those are good questions.
Let's deal with the cost issue and the price of affordable housing. The commonly held belief is that mass timber is more expensive than other forms of construction. I took on affordable housing partly because I wanted to dispel the belief that mass timber is, in fact, more expensive.
We now source all of our materials from Ontario. We manufacture in a highly automated facility in Ontario. We sell and distribute many of our products locally. We have proven that mass timber is actually one of the most cost-effective ways of building affordable housing. It's slightly more expensive than an all-stick frame construction, but it's 15% to 20% faster than an all light wood frame form of construction.
The beauty of the hybrid structures that we're promoting in the industry is that all of the components are factory made. All of the light wood frame materials and all of the mass timber components are made in factories, so we can produce these buildings in volume.
Absolutely, it's environmentally friendly. As I indicated in my presentation, we are using our forests' natural ability to absorb carbon and store the remaining carbon in the form of these beautiful buildings. There's a huge environmental push to this form of construction.
The answer to those questions is yes, absolutely.