Thank you for those comments. I think they're very relevant, and the idea of a summit is well taken. I just participated in a Quebec summit with my colleagues, and it brought the parties together to try to get alignment and everybody starting from the same page. I think that is important, because there's clearly a bright future, but there's a tough road to go. I don't think it's a question of forgetting about pulp and paper and moving on to something else. I think the pulp and paper stream is incredibly important, but we have to do different things differently.
For instance, we talked about the highly valued long fibre--black spruce, let's say, if you're in northern Ontario or Quebec. It makes the world's best product. We can take it to our advantage. Eucalyptus from South America cannot make highly filled papers going over 40% or so, or specialty papers that can be bioreactive, but we can do that. Technology is being developed on that. So the transformation of the way we're doing our existing business is a very important thing that we shouldn't forget.
Second, we have to diversify our value streams. When we talk about biofibre and the bioeconomy, we're talking about making chemicals and new biocomposites. There are 1.5 trillion tonnes of cellulose being produced on the planet every year. It's renewable. It's one of the most abundant large molecules you can find.
AV Cell, for instance--one of the members here is from that area of New Brunswick--is making rayon for clothing. It's a joint venture between Tembec and an Indian company, and it's clothing Indians in India.
So there's a whole array of things. We're talking about new shelter systems that will provide relief shelters around the world in some ways. But it does takes looking at it, which we haven't done in the past. I think it's one of the big reasons why we've got into trouble.
I heard the statement about not renewing or investing in our mills, but we lost a connect with our customer. Our customer is looking for solutions, not two-by-fours. We need to come up with solutions and packages that are built around the fact that we're the greenest place in the world, in terms of certification and everything else. We're green in our manufacturing. Within five years our industry will be completely fossil-fuel neutral. We will be adding biofuel energy to the grid. So it goes on and on. Wood is the most sustainable building material you can find.
One aspect is water consumption. The number one constraint that's going to impact the world next when we talk about energy is water. We just heard today about the pollution in China, in Hubei province. It's overwhelming. It's going to stop it.
We have 20% of the world's fresh water resource in Canada. If you build a structure in steel versus wood, you use 10 to 11 times more water to produce it than if you had built it in wood. There's such a hell of a future, it just blows me away.
We haven't talked too much about the people who work in this area. How do we empower them? How do we give them a passion so that students will come back into this industry and see this bioeconomy? How do we motivate them? What about the training, the education, the freedom to really think?
My talk today is on technology and innovation. Innovation is people. It's the people on the shop floor all the way to innovative thinkers in the senior management of companies, and what have you. That's what we need to be pushing.
Thank you.
