Evidence of meeting #75 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 quebec.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Maybe we can continue on the comments we were hearing regarding the benefits of using wood in construction. We all talked about how we might be seeing 30 storeys at some point, if a few things get changed and moved along, which I think has some advantages.
What are some of the environmental benefits we are seeing with wood over steel and concrete? Would either of you two gentlemen like to expand on that?
Chief Executive Officer, Quebec Forest Industry Council
I can speak about that.
As I said in French, it's very important to see the forests as a whole, and the future for the environment, and consider the ability to stop carbon with wood construction.
In Quebec we have many organizations working on that. We have Cecobois, which is one of the companies that is working very hard to have more wood in construction. For sure, that is the key for the future of the environment in Canada.
Conservative
President, Structurlam Products LP
Yes, sure.
Was the question specifically wood versus steel or concrete?
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Yes. What other benefits are there that you may not have touched on? Is there anything you want to expand on?
President, Structurlam Products LP
I think we need to get recognized.
The number one advantage of building out of wood is the speed of installation. There's a huge advantage from the scheduling component, and time is money, but quite often, we don't get the benefit of that. In other words, a general contractor, someone who's building, decides to build out of wood or has a job to do out of that, but doesn't really discount the value of that saved time. They'll look at the cost of steel versus concrete versus wood, and they will just look at the material costs. They don't look at those scheduling costs, and that's the number one thing.
I don't know if you heard but that building at UBC, 16 floors of wood, was erected in nine weeks. You couldn't build it out of steel anyway. You can't do that with concrete. I think if we can just get those benefits out there and recognized, you'll see a lot more uptick in building out of wood.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
How much of that building you mentioned was prefab?
Conservative
President, Structurlam Products LP
Yes, every stick and every panel that went into that building was prefabricated at our plant in the Okanagan down to plus or minus 1.5 millimetres in accuracy. That's where your time.... It's incredibly accurate. The material is perfect when it arrives, and as long as everything is ready to be installed, it can be taken.... This is what happened at UBC. They took it right off the truck and installed it and the truck was gone. There were two trucks a day.
Steel and concrete don't have the same tolerances and they're nowhere near as accurate, so that's where we really win. We just have to get those benefits of saving that time across to the construction community.
I think if we saw the federal government use a little more wood in their buildings that would send a message.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you, both, for being here.
I'm going to start with Mr. Downing.
Hello, Bill.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I'm good, and thanks for mentioning my bill. I hope everybody on the committee heard that message and will pass it on to their colleagues about my private member's bill that promotes the use of wood in federal government buildings.
Obviously, I want to talk about that and ask you how you feel more government procurement like this across the country would help Structurlam and also other possible manufacturers across Canada. I think there might be only one other plant right now. There are very few that I know of in the United States.
I want to talk about the possibility for future expansion in Canada, and also guarding against future competition from the United States. We heard from Michael Green about new projects happening just across the border. Could you expand on that?
President, Structurlam Products LP
I'll start with the competition side. I don't really worry about it too much because I think that as long as the pie is continuing to grow, other members can come in and we can all do quite well. I'm not particularly worried about the material coming in from the U.S. market. What worries me the most is our competitors in the European arena because right at this point in time they have an advantage in fibre. Their fibre is less expensive. Also, their plants are extremely automated and they're very well capitalized over there.
Remember that the plants doing it here in British Columbia are still relatively small companies. They have a big advantage. If they wanted to, they could sell their product over here at cost, or whatever, because this is just an additional market for them. I really am concerned about the European competition heating up, but less so from the United States.
I can just tell you that your bill, Richard.... What happened in British Columbia is if we hadn't had that Wood First Act here, then I don't think Structurlam would have had a market for our products when we first came out of the gate. You're trying to get something new going and you just need the additional help to do that. Plants and other companies, as they pop up across Canada, will require the same kind of assistance.
I don't see any logical reason why we wouldn't build those federal buildings out of wood. It makes 100% sense. We grow the material here. It's a sustainable material, a renewable material, a carbon neutral material, so why aren't we using it in our federal buildings? It's very rare to see.
Richard, we saw that they added on to the Penticton airport. That would have been nice to see in wood. I see buildings all the time built out of steel and concrete right here in Penticton and it drives me crazy. I just think we need that help.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Okay, thanks.
You mentioned the building codes. I read last week that there was a new fire test in the United States of a two-storey wood building that was basically built out of mass timber and they set it on fire and the furniture burned and nothing else.
Can you comment on that? How are your buildings constructed in terms of fire codes? How do you get the fire chiefs to sign off on that?
President, Structurlam Products LP
Again, it's through an alternative process, if it's not inside the building code now. We've made great strides in that. You have to remember that there are two different scenarios we're talking about.
What you're talking about is a fully exposed wood wall or a wood roof. In that situation we rely on mass timber's innate ability to charcoal, basically, to burn slowly through the outside. Typically, once it runs out of fuel, the fire will actually go out. We're not talking about a two-by-four building, or if you could imagine kindling versus logs. They would burn very slowly and eventually the fire would typically go out, that is, if it's exposed.
We don't really see that as the major market. We want people to treat our mass timber elements as just another building element, and if you want to cover them up, like they did at the UBC building, then cover them up. We can still compete. The problem comes in when people like Michael Green—and of course, bless him, he's been great for the wood industry—and all the architects always seem to want to expose that wood and I don't think there is any real reason to. You can expose some of it, maybe a feature wall or two.
As soon as you get into encapsulated wood, now it's behind a couple of layers of drywall and you can get three-hour or better fire ratings quite easily. There are two paths we can go by here. I'm perfectly fine with covering the wood up.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Where this material does not apply to softwood lumber agreements, you could ship as much as you wanted to into the United States. Also, if we built up that market in Canada, it would provide markets within Canada that we wouldn't have to worry about. Could you comment on that aspect?
President, Structurlam Products LP
Yes. Obviously, the fact that it crosses the border with no duties is an advantage for us when shipping south of the border, for example, for that Microsoft job. The real concern for us right now is, frankly, the price of lumber itself. The price of lumber has doubled this year. If you can imagine, we are in a business where 60% of the cost of the CLT is the fibre that goes into it. A spike of 100% on the lumber side is a difficult thing to pass on to customers, especially considering that we quote a building, say, that isn't going to be built for six months. Then we'd have to go back to our lumber suppliers, like Canfor, for example, and they did this in the Microsoft building. They agreed to hold their price for six months. That's very unusual in the wood business. Most lumber providers will give you a quote that's good for two weeks.
Unlike the concrete and steel industry, which has this huge advantage because you can get a quote for concrete or steel and they'll be able to hold their numbers for a long time, lumber is really tough. It's another challenge we face, especially in a market where lumber is spiking.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Monsieur Lebel, could I get a quick comment from you about developing both the domestic and U.S. markets by using mass timber, getting around the softwood lumber agreement, and how federal procurement might be able to stimulate that?
Chief Executive Officer, Quebec Forest Industry Council
Yes, as my partner said before, we have to open the market. You talked about fire. I attended a presentation about that by the American Wood Council last week. I know exactly what you are talking about, and those are facts, but we have to continue to push. Canada for sure has to let the market open. It's very important to do that. I know we now have a way to defend our rights, and I totally agree with that, but we have to all work together.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Bill, I want to touch on something really quickly. You talked about federal procurement. I completely agree with you that we should be doing more to encourage the use of not even wood-frame buildings but these laminated wood-beam buildings. One of the earlier presenters we had was Chantiers Chibougamau. Part of their presentation was around the fact that it is more expensive to build because of proximity to a location where the building is going to be built. There were some concerns that it automatically pushes them out of the marketplace for federal procurement because of the price point.
What's your experience with that? How do you think we should address it?
President, Structurlam Products LP
I touched on that a little earlier. When people want to compare building a mass timber building or a wood building with steel or concrete, they will focus on the cost of the material. At the end of the day, as long as the general contractor or the owner's rep or however that building is being subbed out, the construction team understands that they're going to save considerable time building in mass timber. I think we can compete head to head.
We're getting better and better at pulling costs out of the building. The systems, the wood-to-wood connections, are getting better. The building designs are better now. We're at a point now, I believe, that on a mass timber basis we could compete with concrete just about anywhere.
