Natural Resources Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Yvon Pelletier]

Bamboo was one of the products mentioned earlier, but it represents a small share of the market. I talked about another fibre, Tencel, that could be developed in Canada. It holds a large share of this new market and there's potential to develop that market here, in Canada. These people want to invest all over the world and haven't necessarily made their final decision. It would be beneficial to sit down with them in order to create the conditions they need to build their manufacturing facilities here.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

For 10 minutes, please, Mr. Rafferty.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Rakshit and Mr. Voss, you both talked about the problems that Canada has in being competitive. You mentioned, in particular, transportation and markets. I wonder if you both could answer this briefly.

Where does the federal government have a role, or maybe a more robust role, to play in narrowing this competitive gap that you're both talking about? Either one can go first.

[Ben Voss]

I will talk more to bread and butter issues than innovation-related issues.

The infrastructure deficits are massive. In the period from 2007 to 2010 the rail line to Meadow Lake was ripped out, which seems unbelievable when you think of the need to move product to market. There's no rail line any more, so now we invest tens of millions of dollars a year to pave highways to move product to market. The issue that is front and centre right now is that grain and all related products are struggling to move their product to market. We have to go by truck; rail is not reliable. That is a fundamental national issue that should be addressed. That is the role of the federal government.

When it comes to the ability to adapt new technology, you would find that most federal government programs encourage you to create jobs, but not necessarily to cut jobs. Investment in technology cuts jobs and it's a good news story because that preserves jobs. Would you rather close the mill because it's not viable, or invest in new technology and training people to run new technology? We have a great opportunity to look at adapting some of our programming and to look at that realm of our economy where we focus on training people in much higher technology fields to run this high-tech equipment rather than just be a labourer working in a plant. I think that's where most young people want to go anyway.

[Prof. Sudip Kumar Rakshit]

If I understand your question correctly, one of the problems is the cost of transportation, as I said earlier. When you compare that with emerging economies, their transportation and labour costs are low, and they don't have environmental requirements. All of this makes our processing.... More than $120 only for the transportation cuts into a lot of the revenue.

When it comes to existing pulp and paper mills, such as the mill in Thunder Bay that was mentioned, I see them in 10 years time being an energy producer rather than a paper or pulp producer. They're already heading in that direction, where 50% of them will be producing pellets rather than.... Talking about pellets, as all of us know, we used to send pellets from British Columbia to Europe, but there is a possibility that it would now be sent even from Thunder Bay because of some of the new technologies for transferring the pellets from the smaller boats to bigger boats. It used to be a major cost factor. At least one company, Rentech, has developed some technology that would make it—

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Do I have a moment?

[Prof. Sudip Kumar Rakshit]

I don't know what other strings are attached to that. When I first came here I used to find it very strange that it's possible to export from British Columbia and not from Thunder Bay, but now Rentech seems to have solved that problem. If they have solved that problem—they have a 10-year contract, from what I hear—then more companies can be doing that, and that will take care of some of these companies that are having problems staying viable.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you all very much for being here today. It was a fascinating meeting and it did add to our study substantially.

Thank you to Mr. Voss, Dr. Gray, Professor Rakshit, Dr. Sain, Mr. Pelletier, and Mr. Veilleux. Thank you so much. We do appreciate your being here. We look forward to putting the information you've given us into our study.

The meeting is adjourned.