Evidence of meeting #74 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was building.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
It's finished lumber, everything from two-by-fours—
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
Dimensional lumber, yes.
It's two-by-fours, and we do grades from economy all the way through to J grade for the Japanese market.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay. For whatever reasons, they have very high standards on imports.
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
They do. We'd like more of it. They pay more.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I want to shift a little bit into the biomass part of your presentation. I found that very interesting.
Your company has invested I think $103 million into the initial facility, and then an additional $12 million into the fuel handling—
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
No, altogether. The fuel handling is in that $103 million.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay.
You obviously feel there's a good rate of return on that investment, and your investors do too. Your stock price has done very well in the last year. It's gone up 50%, so somebody thinks you're doing the right thing.
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
We're hitting our targets, so people are happy. Our power plant's on target, and then we're hitting some of the other objectives. All this is public record, but we're doing about $14 million in EBITDA. That is really a good, solid return for a small forest products company in the public arena.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
We've had previous witnesses at committee tell us that they can't access the power grid in B.C. You've been able to do that.
4:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
We were then, but we wouldn't be able to do a second project today because the costs associated with building a power plant mean that we would need to have some help in terms of where the rates get set. There's enough power in British Columbia right now, as I'm sure you know, so they're not looking for more. The rate they would pay if they were even open to taking more power is too low to justify the cost, but in 2010 it was a different environment and they were trying to encourage more independent, clean power.
Government regulation really made that happen, and government regulation, and where it's at today, means that we're not likely to see more biomass power in British Columbia. It's a very different story in our neighbouring province, in Alberta, where there's a high need to replace coal as a primary source. I'm hoping that the Government of Alberta is going to be providing some opportunities for some of my colleagues in the forest products sector.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
4:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
That's all right. I don't—
4:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Corporate Development, Conifex Timber Inc.
Thank you.
You know how to find us. That's what I'll say.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Thank you.
I will share my time with my colleague, for these five minutes, so I will ask a very quick question and expect very brief answers from you.
My question is for Mr. Moonen.
You answered some questions about education for engineers and the industry on the use of the tall wood buildings. However, the committee heard a slightly different story on Monday from one witness who said that the designers and the architects are well prepared for the technical challenge of building tall wood buildings in Canada or other countries, but he added that the industry is not there yet.
That's slightly different from your comments. Can you explain that a little bit? Where does the real gap lie, with the industry or with the designer?
4:40 p.m.
Manager, National Sustainability, Canadian Wood Council
You should know I'm going to be talking to Michael next Tuesday. Michael is one of a very few extremely talented architects who are very well-equipped to do that, but Michael didn't learn that at Cornell. He learned it in the firms he was at. Architects are not equipped, and you can ask him. He didn't learn that in school, and that's my point. We need to teach them at the beginning so that when they get into a project and they're in a position where they're determining what the material is, they at least have an understanding. If you are an engineer who has a specialty in wood, there are no shortages of jobs. Every graduate from the UNBC program got a job.
There is a shortage of engineers who understand wood, and we deal with architects and engineers all day. Michael is an elite, extremely competent, talented guy, and he's a friend of mine, and I'll be talking to him on Monday.
4:40 p.m.
President, Cobden Strategies
May I just make one point, though, because this has come up a few times around the table, and I really want to stress this. It gets to Michael's point about the industry not being ready. Who he means by that is the building industry, and that points to the same problem that Peter is outlining, which is that we need the skill sets out of our colleges and polytechnics, for example, that really do support the construction industry to get the right skills in place for tall wood construction.
It is about education, and to Mary's earlier comments, that's actually in your jurisdiction, secondary education and skills and polytechnics.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
That's very generous, Geng. Thank you.
I'm not a regular member of this committee, but I am happily filling today. I want to ask a question about carbon neutrality.
You mentioned, Mr. Moonen, at the outset of your presentation the many benefits that wood provides from an environmental perspective. If you put all those into one category, and compare it with another category, that being the cutting of trees, do we still end up in a carbon neutral situation?
