It's a privilege to appear before you this afternoon, particularly with my colleagues from the CBFA, Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, and my colleagues at FPInnovations. As “innovation” is in their name, I think it's only appropriate that they are with us virtually. We work very closely with these two organizations, and it's my pleasure to be here. As the chair stated, I am David Lindsay, and I'm joined by Catherine Cobden, the executive vice-president of FPAC.
In preparation for today's deliberations of the committee, I went back and looked at the 2008 standing committee report. I also had an opportunity to review the ADM's presentation from January 29. As Glenn Mason reported, since the report of 2008 there has been considerable progress on the part of industry, our partners in the innovation space, and the government to create an alignment and move forward on a journey of transformation for the Canadian forest sector.
As Aran already alluded, the perfect storm of economic circumstances we faced over the last decade spurred the Forest Products Association of Canada, working closely with our partners, our member companies, and the academic community, to develop a strategic planning exercise. About two and a half years ago, we published a very ambitious Vision 2020. This vision contains several very clear metrics for our products, our performance, and our people.
Mr. Chairman, I've spoken to many members of the committee and to others, both individually and in small groups, about our Vision 2020. We recently distributed to members of the committee our first two-year report card holding ourselves accountable for the metrics of Vision 2020.
For the committee researchers, or those who are helping write your report, it's also available on our website if you want to obtain copies there. We're in the paper business, so we're glad to bring paper copies for you.
The standing committee report in 2008 recommended that the industry pursue a strategy of diversifying our markets and creating new value-added products. We thank the committee and the government for their support over the last couple of years. I would like to report that we are making good progress. We had a growth of 10% in exports last year after a number of difficult years. Forest products are now Canada's largest export to China. We are quite proud of that factoid. We climbed from about two billion dollars' worth of exports to China in 2009 to currently about $4.7 billion. We're exporting to 180 countries around the world.
Working with our colleagues at FPInnovations and the academic community, and of course our government partners, we are continuing to invest in new innovation, creating new products and new opportunities in everything from bioenergy to biomaterials and biochemicals for the forest industry, and seeking maximum value from every tree we harvest.
In 2008 your committee report touched on the challenges of greenhouse gases, for example, and the role the forests can play in climate-friendly forest management and conservation practices. Our Vision 2020 report card reports on our environmental metrics. For greenhouse gas emissions in particular, we're proud to say that we've reduced those by more than 70% since 1990. We've exceeded the Kyoto recommendations. The government's PPGTP was also a very helpful program in terms of helping our companies make further reductions in GHG emissions.
We're continuing to hold ourselves accountable on a dozen different environmental metrics, including reduction of energy use, reduction of water use, reduction of waste sent to landfill, and a number of other metrics outlined in the report. I won't go into details, but we're well on our way to achieving the Vision 2020 goal of a further 35% reduction in our environmental footprint by the year 2020.
Shifting to the employment objectives we've set for ourselves, we're currently the largest employer—or if not the largest, then among the largest employers—of first nations in the country. For example, looking at the 2006 census, for each province, we have on average about twice the percentage of workers from first nations communities as is represented in the worker population of that given province. We want to continue to build on that. We want to increase our aboriginal representation, increase the number of women in the Canadian forest industry, and encourage more new Canadians to come and work in the forestry products industry, because we'll need 60,000 additional employees by the year 2020.
In some respects, Mr. Chairman, I would say we've come a long way since the report of 2008 and this committee's deliberations. However, if I could be so bold, I would say I don't think the challenge is behind us. I think the challenge is actually ahead of us. I don't think we, as an industry, and those we represent can rest on our laurels. While we have been doing considerably well on all fronts and we've invested, we are in a competition with the rest of the world.
Canada once accounted for about 20% of the globe's forest products. Today, we're contributing about 10% of global production. This is in part due to the downturn, but it's also due to the increased competition we're facing from Brazil and many other countries. Canada has one of the largest fibre baskets in the world. Aran talked about its ecological importance and its economic importance.
According to the 2014 Leger study of global customers, Canada's forest sector has one of the best environmental records in the world. We have huge potential and we have huge opportunity. Canadian forest fibre can be part of the solution to many of the resource stresses our planet is facing. For example, the carbon footprint of forest products is much smaller than the carbon footprint of many other building materials. I know FPInnovations is going to speak to you in a few minutes about many of the new materials we can make from Canada's trees: biochemicals, bioplastics, biomaterials. They're all made from a green renewable resource.
We need to keep going. We can and we must continue to innovate, but doing so requires investment. It requires continued access to Canada's renewable fibre basket.
I look forward to exploring a discussion about these various challenges and opportunities with the committee today, Mr. Chairman, and in the weeks to come as you're working through your submissions.
Let me conclude by pointing out the size of Canada's forest products industry. We're obviously part of the resource sector and that's why we're in front of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources today. But what many people forget is that we're actually a huge manufacturer. We account for 12% of the manufacturing sector of Canada. Now, while automobile manufacturers get lots of publicity and employ directly about 120,000 workers in the auto assembly and auto manufacturing sector, there are at least one and a half times that number of direct employees in the forest products sector. Depending on which study of employment you review, we directly employ roughly 200,000 to 230,000 people, and there is double that again in indirect employment. We're the primary employer in literally hundreds of communities, and we're a huge contributor to Canada's exports.
So making sure we have the right tax incentives, the right transportation infrastructure, and the right climate investment is critical. Because we're in a global competition for investment, we must be vigilant with respect to all of these hosting conditions.
In summary, we need to continue to innovate. We need to continue to protect and enhance our environmental credentials. We need to continue to manage our costs and improve our competitiveness. Our Vision 2020 report card contains a series of recommendations for building on this momentum. We've made recommendations for government, industry, the academic community, and our environmental partners. I commend this report to you as you go through your deliberations, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss it in more detail.
Thank you very much.