Evidence of meeting #17 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mills.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
President and CEO, FPInnovations
For the WD thing. Oh, excellent. Okay.
Having said that, these people are hands-on. They go into operations and they help with local problems and they help improve productivity.
We're suggesting the larger primary producers need that kind of help right now. And we have been prepared, tied to universities, and we've been talking about opportunities. For instance, we just put two people in Lakehead University to be outreach workers.
If we can have those kinds of people help implement the technology, that would be one way. It's stuff that's already there.
The second thing would be demonstration technologies. We talk about gasification or refiners. We've got companies like Nexstar in Canada that are producing a product that works. Heffley Creek in British Columbia put in a kiln-drying operation and within a year and a half they got the full return on their investment. So that's a payback of a year and a half on that kind of equipment. And we're now talking about seeing those kinds of things.
So demonstrations, embedding people, will help us make it work, and that's where we've been failing.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you.
We are out of time, but perhaps you could just give a one-minute answer, Mr. Rigato.
As an Individual
I have one little point.
Newsprint is not cyclical. In the last three years it's dropped almost 6% or 7% a year. It will not come back. It's over; newsprint is over.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Trost.
Thank you to all members of the committee for recommending really good witnesses, and for the good questions.
To all of you gentlemen, thank you for coming, for your presentations, and for your answers. You've certainly demonstrated there is an understanding that the industry must work together. Thank you all.
The meeting is adjourned.
