Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 24th, 2015

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I have a question for Mr. Lee, following up on your testimony, and I appreciate the conversation I had with you previously. You've elaborated in some ways about some of the frustrations with the privately owned forest lands. But I understand that a good number of the members in your association are the big guys like J.D. Irving, Limited; Acadian Timber Corp.; Island Timberlands; and so forth. These aren't small little woodlot owners where they harvest their wood sustainably for their own use.

You raised the concern about the application of the Species At Risk Act to the private landowners. Two questions I will put to you. First, isn't it also the case that, for example, J.D. Irving not only would own private lands but may well be harvesting on public lands, so obviously we should balance off? If we're not going to move to protect the habitat on their private lands, perhaps we have to protect the habitat on the adjacent public lands. Maybe you could speak to that.

You did talk to me about some of the frustrations that the private owners have been facing, because they're actually trying to negotiate conservation agreements where there can be more flexibility. I can assure you that even the environmental community that testified previously when I was in the environment committee are frustrated with the delay in not only the recovery strategies but the action plans. There's been a lot of support across the board for conservation agreements, and possibly that could include management of multiple species.

So I wonder if you could just share with us a bit more about what you've been trying to pursue and where you might seek support to move forward.

[Christopher Lee]

On the first question, you're right. As I mentioned, J.D. Irving and other companies, the folks I represent, own about three million hectares, but they also manage an additional 50 million hectares of public land. What they do in all cases is manage all those pieces as a unit, so it's not like they manage the private land one way and then they do something different on the public land. You need to be able to manage that estate as a unit so you can understand where you're going to get volume in which year, where you're going to build roads, where you're going to regenerate, where your habitat is—all those kinds of things.

With respect to your question about if we're not protecting on private land, then we need to protect on public land, our members do a tremendous job protecting habitat on their land, on private land, which is, as I explained in my remarks, a challenge for them because the land is very productive for trees but it's also very productive for fish and wildlife. So if you have a lot of that habitat, you get a lot of attention in order to set that aside because there is pressure on habitat all over the country.

Their issue is that they know tons about their own land. They know all kinds of things about it because, as Mr. Baker talked about, there's a real incentive to understand how this land functions and how it operates as an ecosystem because that's how they make their living. If they start to share that information with fish and wildlife people, it can really be a challenge because people start to realize that there are tremendous areas of habitat. The more you tell them, the more it seems they want to lock up pieces of your property because it's really good habitat, and without real consultation or partnership either. That's the problem. Our members want to save habitat and want to manage their habitat, but they want to do it in a cooperative way so that when they provide information it's not at their own expense in terms of access.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Duncan.

We go now to Mr. Trost for up to five minutes.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know, Mr. Baker, this wasn't a major emphasis of your presentation, but at the end of your presentation you remarked about the pulp and paper sector and how you had concerns. I know you said it's not a major focus of what you have, but just to make sure we cover off everything here, can you explain your concerns and your fears, why you threw that closing sentence in, and what the committee should be concerned about relative to pulp and paper? What did you mean and what should we look at?

[Ken Baker]

Thank you. I think that's a very important line of inquiry.

In the business model, the pulp and paper sector here, in a sense, is intimately melded with the solid wood sector. Our pulp and paper mills rely overwhelmingly on chips, sawdust, shavings, and so on, from the sawmill sector, and if one side goes down, they both go down.

The long suit we've had on the west coast with our northern fibre was with the quality of that fibre, but technology around the world in the last 25 years has been advancing dramatically such that papermakers, tissue makers, and so on, can do a much better job now with short fibre hardwoods grown very rapidly in places like South America or Southeast Asia. The desirability of relatively high-cost long-fibre pulp from northern Canada is not as strong as it was a generation ago.

I fear there's some danger that the pulp sector is going to go the way of the newsprint sector more broadly. The marketplace is changing fundamentally and profoundly, and it's a global matter. Competition is getting greater and greater, so I fear our pulp manufacturers are going to face a significantly declining market, and they need to do something else with that high-quality input fibre.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Let me have a follow-up question to not just you but also the other people on the panel here.

What can we do? Do we, in New Brunswick, perhaps need to do more research, have more technology, have more value-added products? Is this, again, something for which there are new markets to be found that we haven't explored? Could I have a couple of responses?

What should we do then with regard to that aspect? Most of our witnesses have concentrated on technology and building codes, and so forth, but this is a related portion that we haven't really looked at. Could we have a couple of recommendations from at least a couple of different witnesses here?

Let's start with Mr. Baker.

[Ken Baker]

Thank you.

I'm a huge fan of FPInnovations, which has world-class research and development facilities on the west coast and also in Quebec. It has done a lot of work, at a lab scale, in investigating the concept of creating a biorefinery approach to using that input material to manufacture a wide variety of products other than pulp.

The concept is well developed. The lab-scale experimentation, and so on, I think, is fairly well developed. Again, I have to emphasize that I'm no expert with this opinion. I'm giving you this from afar. But I think there's a huge need for pre-commercialization and then commercialization of what's been achieved in labs, and that's a big-dollar kind of undertaking

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

One of our witnesses over here was indicating he would like to respond.

Go ahead.

[Christopher Lee]

I'll make it quick.

A tree is made of carbon, and you can get everything out of a tree that you can get out of oil. I think the opportunity is to take the approach, as Mr. Baker talked about, of a biorefinery, in which you start by taking all of the aspects of a tree, and you turn those into all those other products. There's a long list of them.

The trouble is that the price of oil is very low, so it's hard to compete against that when you can produce all these products with oil that you can produce with a tree.

[Dr. Ying Hei Chui]

I have a comment on the pulp and paper side. In New Brunswick, you might know, we had a mill that actually produced rayon, not paper products, so that's an example of how we can go outside of the box and think about new applications for wood fibre.

I want to comment on the wood products area, which I'm more familiar with.

Traditionally we work on developing new products and so on, but I feel we have a good range of wood products and building products that can be used now. The key for future innovation is to help the receptor industry—in this case the building industry—with regard to how it can make building with wood cheaper, faster, and more economical. I think that's the sector we need to look at and not so much at our own forestry sector.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Trost. You're out of time.

We'll go now to Monsieur Aubin for up to five minutes.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all the witnesses for being here with us this afternoon and sharing their expertise with us.

I have five short minutes and three issues that are important to me. I will ask you the questions and please try to answer them quickly in a minute and a half. My questions are probably more for Mr. Chui and Mr. Baker, but I encourage everyone to answer them.

Here is my first question.

We have been talking about new products for an hour and a half.

Do I lose my time for this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

No.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We have the clock stopped. We're just waiting until everybody gets their translation devices on, if they need them.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Take your time. The clock is not running.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, please, Monsieur Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was saying that I have five minutes and three issues that are important to me. I will ask one short question on each topic.

I will start with Mr. Chui and Mr. Baker, but I invite everyone to share their views.

For the past hour and a half and the past few meetings, we have been talking about new wood products. We keep hearing that term but there has been no reference to any specific product. Could you give me an example of a new product that has been developed, that did not exist during our first study but exists today.

My second question has to do with value-added products.

A few years ago, before going into politics, I was at a school where they built a new gym. The architect made a point of incorporating laminated wood into the structure so that it was both architecturally pleasing and structurally interesting.

Does anyone in the industry lobby large engineering firms on behalf of the wood industry so that they incorporate wood into their projects?

Here is my third question.

If the industry develops—which we can only hope—that will clearly produce more and more forestry waste. Is that also an economic resource we could use to develop, say, biofuels?

Those are my three questions

[Dr. Ying Hei Chui]

I'll try to answer the first two at least.

You're asking about what the new building products are. In response to an earlier question I mentioned that we already have a wide range of products that can be used. The next step for innovation, to me, is how to put these products together to form a building system. You can probably do it in the factory, which is now becoming more popular, because it saves construction time and so on. We shouldn't be looking so much at the products; we should be looking farther downstream in terms of the solution for builders to be able to put together a building more cheaply.

You're right about wood being an attractive feature. This is why architects around the world like wood, apart from the fact that sustainable building design has now become a real issue. I think we need solutions that are functional and will make wood's appearance appealing to the consumers.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Monsieur Baker, on the same question.

[Ken Baker]

Thank you.

Absolutely the most significant new product, here on the west coast at least, is cross laminated timber. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It is a technology and product line that has been in place in Europe for a number of years. It has just now come into North America.

It's the technology of glueing ordinary lumber together in very large panels, conforming it with computer numerically controlled machines to take it out to a job site and erect large buildings—out-competing reinforced concrete, basically. We think there's huge potential. A lot of people are investing money and intellectual energy into pursuing this product line.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Is anyone in the forestry industry responsible for lobbying big engineering firms to motivate them to use wood? My feeling is that the first reflex is to use concrete and metal, unless you tell me otherwise.

[Dr. Ying Hei Chui]

I will try to answer that.

Part of the research we have been doing, along with FPInnovations and the National Research Council, is to develop the information and the tools for designers to actually design innovative wood buildings, taller buildings, which is a new experience for a lot of them. The key to promoting this particular product that Mr. Baker talked about is to develop the information for designers to use to make it possible for them to design with that product.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

We go now to Ms. Crockatt for up to five minutes.