Natural Resources Committee on April 13th, 2017

[Marie-Hélène Labrie]

We tested over 25 types of feedstock that industry asked us to test that were really waste, that had no value for them. I'm not talking about that feedstock. We have the capacity to help industries get rid of their residues. I'm not talking about things that have value for them, so that does not apply in this case.

Today, we decided to take municipal solid waste as our primary focus because we get paid to take that feedstock as well, instead of having to pay for the biomass. That makes it even more attractive, especially for the first project we're launching. What I'm saying is that there is a lot of flexibility. We've been approached by different groups to deal with their residues, and to have that synergy where waste becomes a resource to produce high-value product. We get more into a circular economy, rather than just a linear economy.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

That's it.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Ms. Labrie, where did the idea come from? Nobody from the oil and gas sector was coming to you and saying, “Well, help us do this”. Where did the idea for your process come from? What gap did you recognize, and what was the process you used?

[Marie-Hélène Labrie]

The vision, the idea, came from Dr. Esteban Chornet, a retired professor of chemical engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke. He was involved in looking at solutions to take forest residues to produce electricity at the time, and he had the idea in the nineties of trying to find a solution to basically use mixed waste, to try to solve the issues related to managing our waste, while also producing liquid transportation fuels.

The company was co-founded in 2000 by Dr. Esteban Chornet and his son, who's the businessman and has a finance background. They started at the lab phase, using the Université de Sherbrooke installation, and then they invested in a pilot. They got some money from the regional economical development fund in Quebec, but soon they had to go outside Canada to find some private capital. They went to New York and they found two clean tech funds that were ready to invest; and basically the company has gone through all the steps in terms of technology development and validation, from pilot to the demonstration phase.

NRCan supported us with some R and D programs at the beginning. Then SDTC helped us. It really complemented the capital we were able to attract from private investors, and for our private investors, it was really key to have the Canadian government through all those phases of development.

SDTC was also involved at the commercial phase, with the next generation biofuels fund. The way they do the technical due diligence is by having an independent engineer. It was a very thorough selection process with commercial due diligence, technical due diligence; and we got a repayable loan from SDTC for the large-scale facility, but most of the funding we got was private. We got most of our skills from universities. A lot of people also coming from the petrochemical industry came to work for us, and we have great people with very strong skills. We have headquarters here in Canada and and we can grow the company internationally.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cannings, you are last up.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I think I'll turn to Monsieur Belzile. I haven't chatted with you today. I'm going to ask a long, rambling question here, and it may not have much to do with clean tech, but since you brought it up, I thought I'd rise to that bait.

You talked about some of the challenges around natural resource extraction in Canada, and two you mentioned were this rising concept of social licence, and environmental assessments that were unduly long. I forgot what your terms were, but I'm referring to those two things, which I think you'll agree are connected in some ways.

Monsieur Lemieux brought this up, I think. I'm from British Columbia. There has obviously been a dramatic increase in polarization around these issues over the past 10 years. I have laid the blame in the past partly on the previous government, which tried to call people who were against some of these energy projects foreign-funded terrorists or something like that. That caused people like me to sit up and take notice, and think about which side they were on. It really split the population.

The present government was elected on a promise to regain the confidence of Canadians in these projects by having a new environmental assessment process that would listen to communities, to first nations, because that's at the heart of it, I think. That's where social licence, however fuzzy it is, comes from, from listening to people and having them feel they've been listened to. I would say from my conversations with people in British Columbia that the process that they invented, and that happened last summer around the Kinder Morgan approval, didn't accomplish that at all.

So we're stuck with...even though the government is claiming that they've already created 20,000 jobs because they have all these pipelines that are being built, when they're still facing a lot of social opposition. There's Kinder Morgan in British Columbia. We have the—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Cannings, I should have reminded you at the beginning that you have only three minutes. You're getting dangerously close to that now.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay, I'm sorry.

We have these projects that are still facing substantial opposition from the public, who say, “These are our resources. This is our environment.”

It would be difficult for you to go and say, “Let me teach you about the environment.” They would try to teach you.

Could you comment on that conundrum and how we get through it?

[Germain Belzile]

It's a very difficult question. It's a very difficult problem. I don't have a ready-made solution for that.

Maybe I could give you a few ideas I have about that subject.

First of all, I think we should make sure that we deal with all the social licence problems early on in the processes. We should not let the process drag on.

Once companies have spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to get a project approved and in the end we decide, “Well, there is a social licence problem, so we won't do it,” I think it's very unfair. I think it goes completely against the rule of law.

Let's not forget that we owe much of our prosperity in the west—I'm not talking about western Canada, I'm talking western civilization—to the fact that we've been using the rule of law for so long. That's why other countries are copying us, in fact.

The rule of law means that we have rules, that we have objective ways of implementing them, and that the rules are known.

When we enter into social licence, there are in fact no rules and we don't know what's going to happen, so it's very difficult.

That's the first thing.

Second, if I still have a few seconds—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Please answer very quickly, sir.

[Germain Belzile]

—I think it's very important to understand that social licence does not mean that everyone has to agree.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Oh, I know.

[Germain Belzile]

I think it comes down to that, in the end. We are trying to have everyone agree and it's very difficult.

Maybe I can give a bad example. You will not get Homer Simpson to agree with you sometimes.

Some people will not agree with you anyway, whatever you do, so we need to think hard about that. There is no way to make everyone happy in this situation.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much to the three of you. Your evidence has been very helpful and will be useful to contributing to our report when it's completed in a few months' time.

On that note, we will adjourn. I hope everybody has a very happy Easter long weekend, and works hard but enjoys the next two constituency weeks. We will see you on May 2 when we get back here and talk about clean tech. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.