Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 4th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us today.

First off, thank you to both sets of witnesses, because I know this is a rescheduled attendance. We're grateful for your being able to make the time to join us again.

Today we have Mr. Meyer, who's the vice-president, operations, from Emily Creek Woodworking Limited. We also have Fred LeBlanc, who's the 13th district vice-president from the International Association of Firefighters, and joining him is Mr. Greg Hewitt, research assistant. Thank you all for being here today.

I'd like to welcome Mr. Serré back. We're glad to see you, and our hearts were with you during your absence.

For the witnesses, you each have up to 10 minutes to deliver your remarks, which you can do in either official language. You can anticipate being asked questions in French and English, and there are translation devices available should you need them.

I will open the floor to Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Hewitt, since you're here with us today. The floor is yours.

[Fred LeBlanc, 13th District Vice-President, International Association of Fire Fighters]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I appreciate your taking the time and the opportunity to hear from the IAFF today.

As you heard, my name is Fred LeBlanc, I'm the 13th district vice-president for the IAFF. I'm a recently retired Kingston firefighter. I spent 32 years on the job. Now I'm a full-time union representative for the IAFF.

“District vice-president” means I'm vice-president for district 13, representing Ontario and Manitoba on a board of 16 members in total.

With me today is Greg Hewitt, our researcher from our Canadian office, which is located here in Ottawa. Just for full disclosure, I want to let the committee know that I suffer from a significant vision loss and it has rendered me legally blind, so I'm going to turn to Greg to read our statement and give our testimony. Together we'll be happy to answer any questions that may come before us.

At this time I'd like to turn it over to Greg Hewitt.

[Greg Hewitt, Research Assistant, Canadian Office, International Association of Fire Fighters]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to share our views on this important issue today.

To briefly introduce our organization, the International Association of Fire Fighters represents more than 310,000 professional firefighters in North America, including more than 25,000 in Canada. In Canada's largest cities and towns, our members are on scene in minutes in any kind of emergency, large or small, including structure fires, medical emergencies, water and ice rescues, hazardous materials incidents, and more.

The IAFF certainly supports a vibrant economy and a successful, sustainable wood and wood products industry, including the expansion of the forest sector, and opportunities for its workers. At the same time, as national and provincial building codes are responding quickly to the need for innovation in the expanded use of wood products, we urge the committee to exercise caution, and to do what it can to regulate or encourage the regulation of adequate fire protection, meaning firefighter and public safety.

As fire protection is a municipal responsibility, it is also provincially regulated. We suggest this should be a topic of discussion for the federal government's municipal and provincial partners. The rush to allow wood-frame construction of up to 12 storeys, which is proposed for the 2020 edition of the national building code of Canada, has been billed as an economic boost for the forestry industry.

As we have formally stated to the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, and to the federal government, we remain unconvinced about the fire performance of tall wood structures, and whether our urban fire departments and front-line personnel are really prepared to safely and effectively protect the public in the event of a fire inside a tall wood structure.

We're aware of studies that discuss the fire performance of cross-laminated timbers and glulam, and the charring effect that supposedly protects these materials from failure. Our members across Canada can attest to the fact that what happens in a large structure filled with modern combustible materials can be very different from what happens in the confines of a controlled test environment.

Our chief concern is that a majority of urban fire departments in Canada probably lack the equipment, resources, and training to safely and effectively respond to a fire in a tall or large wood-frame structure. Firefighters may be required to be inside a burning structure long after other occupants have escaped in order to search for and rescue anyone who may be trapped, and to provide aggressive interior suppression in order to save the building and its contents. This is what the public expects of firefighters. Firefighters will be inside or in close proximity to one of these structures in the event of a collapse.

In our view, there are too many unknowns about the way a completed six-, 10-, or 12-storey combustible wood-frame structure would respond in a real fire situation. It's hard to predict the weight load and the fuel load of a particular structure once it is built and populated.

There's also the prospect, as was tragically seen in the Grenfell Tower fire in London, U.K., earlier this year, that modifications, in this case flammable exterior cladding, may be made to an existing structure many years later. Neither the national building code, national fire code, nor respective provincial building codes address fire department response capabilities as they relate to the suitability or safety of a particular structure.

There was no reference in proposals for mid-rise wood-frame construction to any fire protection standards, such as NFPA 1710, the science-based standard from the National Fire Protection Association, that quantifies adequate fire department deployment in an urban setting.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Sorry, Mr. Hewitt, can I interrupt you for one second? I understand that the interpreters may be having a bit of difficulty, so I would ask you to slow down just a little.

Thank you.

[Greg Hewitt]

Certainly.

The truth is that very few Canadian cities currently meet the response time and personnel standards for existing two-storey structures, let alone high-density structures made of combustible materials. In our review of previous testimony before this committee on this study, we see grand assumptions made about municipal fire protection that just aren't accurate—for example, that local fire officials are consulted on and could veto a building in their city. This just does not happen.

Even if a community does have adequate fire protection resources to protect a particular structure, there is no guarantee that they will be there during its entire lifespan. What we are actually seeing in many communities across Canada right now is the propensity to reduce fire department resources and capabilities for political and budgetary reasons. We can point to numerous communities in Canada, large and small, that have experienced station closures or firefighter layoffs, and many that are contemplating initiatives that would increase response times and decrease the fire department personnel and equipment available to respond.

This common scenario would leave the occupants of any given structure with even less protection than builders and authorities anticipated when it was built. Commonly, when these kinds of cuts are made, fire prevention and inspection are among the first to be targeted. These are the fire safety individuals the occupants of these structures would rely on most to ensure that the structure is always in compliance with codes and regulations—for example, when modifications are made.

As the population ages, a greater percentage of citizens have mobility problems, which is another factor to consider, especially if these structures are to be used for such things as hospitals, which we understand from previous testimony is a target use for wood-frame buildings in additions to schools, malls, parking garages, and bridges.

Firefighter safety is another concern. In our view, the move to permit higher and taller wood-frame buildings in the national building code is set against the backdrop of an objective-based code that does not include firefighter safety as an objective. As a result, firefighter safety cannot be used as the basis for a code change request.

We would also note that the national building code, despite being a model code, establishes the absolute minimum performance that builders are required to achieve. It is not the Cadillac level; it's the minimum. Six-storey wood-frame structures were first permitted under the British Columbia building code. The first such structure was consumed in a massive blaze in Richmond in May 2011, confirming that they are particularly vulnerable when they are under construction.

In December 2013, a four-storey wood-frame student residence under construction in downtown Kingston, Ontario caught fire, sparking a massive inferno that spread to two adjacent buildings while taxing the city's emergency response infrastructure to its limit for 48 hours. The builders were charged by the Ontario Ministry of Labour with 22 offences, 11 of which were related to fire safety precautions that were not followed.

Having fire safety regulations and having an existing level of fire protection in a community are not guarantees that any particular structure is safe. The truth is that every working fire represents a danger not only to the public, but to the firefighters who respond. Large blazes, such as the Richmond and Kingston wood-frame blazes, also reduce the resources that fire departments have available to handle simultaneous incidents.

In closing, firefighters are not opposed to a vibrant forestry sector or innovation in building codes, but if such changes occur quickly, we urge more thorough discussion of firefighter and public safety considerations against the backdrop we have described of inadequate fire protection in many communities and the prospect that any given municipality may reduce its fire protection capabilities in the future.

We appreciate this opportunity to present our views to the committee on behalf of Canada's professional firefighters, and we look forward to answering any questions the members may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Meyer, it's over to you.

[Samuel Meyer, Vice-President, Operations, Emily Creek Woodworking Ltd.]

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Sam Meyer, and I work in operations for an architectural millwork firm that specializes in the manufacturing of custom case goods and wood products for various commercial, industrial, and institutional industries. We are a family-run business that has been in operation for over 30 years.

In recent years we have been facing increases from various areas of our business, and the threat of higher and increased charges continues to roll in. This is coming from the provincial and federal levels, and encompasses everything from material surcharges, hydroelectricity, minimum wage and vacation time increases, to CPP and payroll taxes. It is becoming a lot more expensive to operate a business in the province of Ontario, and the opportunities to recoup these costs are diminishing.

On the material purchasing side, we have faced various increases from different levels. We have started to see carbon charge lines as well as delivery surcharges on almost all orders we receive. This was not prevalent in years past, and it is becoming harder to predict the shipping and supply costs of the various materials we bring in.

The millwork industry is dealing with varying quality, availability, and cost issues with a lot of our materials and supplies. With the latest anti-dumping ruling, brought in on imported Chinese plywood, all imported materials are slated to increase in the near future. These are unforeseen costs and not allowed for in our original quotations. We are not able to request a change for the increase in material costs.

For some of our projects, green building credits are being pursued by architects and designers through material specifications that include low or formaldehyde-free boards and certified lumber and panels. Suppliers who can supply these materials are becoming more difficult to find, especially for small orders. For example, just this past week, we required 50 sheets of material for a small part of a project and our suppliers came back stating we must order many times that amount. They said we needed a minimum order of 300-plus sheets, which is about six lifts. This not only throws the project material cost way up, but reduces our revenue, and above all, it is wasteful, given the fact that we might not be able to use this material again for other projects and must either dispose of the 250 extra sheets that aren't needed, or tie up needed square footage to store this material in the hopes that we can use it in the future.

Millwork product specifications are generally established and reused by designers and architects, some of whom have limited knowledge of wood properties, gluing, finishing, etc. This situation is problematic as we have noticed that designer specs are often of poor quality or are outdated. Unrealistic specifications force millwork companies to redesign the products ordered and then finish the technical details of designs. This additional work translates into unforeseen additional costs. All architectural millwork companies should be required to follow the strict guidelines set out by the Architectural Woodwork Manufacturers Association of Canada, or AWMAC for short. This would help to eliminate outdated and redundant specifications, allow for fairer pricing, and give the end-user a better quality product.

As we are members, we feel this would bring up all quality levels to realistic expectations, and projects would be quoted on the same level by competent competitors. This would result in fairer pricing for a better product.

On the operational expenses side, we have seen increases from various sectors and areas. The cost of hydroelectricity has just been reduced as a provincial rollout program to assist with this expense. However, we have already seen increased charges, and received letters stating further biannual increases are slated for the near future. We are being forced to use hydro as our main source of power, and penalized for that, as there are currently no cost-effective alternatives for our high-voltage industrial power needs.

We would appreciate being able to contribute to a healthy environment. However, we are lacking the resources to be able to do our part as a small business.

Recently, we received notice that the minimum wage is increasing. It has gone from $11.40 in May of this year to $11.60 this past October, and will increase to $14.00 an hour as of January 1, 2018. This is a large increase in a short time, as we sometimes quote our work upwards of a year in advance, using the current labour rates. All our contracts are binding, and we do not have grounds for increases once contracts have been signed. This is now a bottom-line hit that cannot be recovered.

This also causes a trickle-up effect. Everyone higher up in the company has said they feel entitled to a pay increase, no matter what their current pay rate is. Also, as of May this year, there were additional mandates for vacation time pay, as well as paid emergency days off. Vacation time pays are increasing from two to three weeks, and emergency days are now an additional mandatory paid two days off.

We are all for the fair treatment of our employees. However, as previously mentioned, this is another bottom line hit that cannot be recouped.

The millwork industry is currently dealing with a shortage of labour. Part of the problem results from the fact that jobs in this sector tend to be low-paying. Apprenticeship programs do exist but most training is still done in-house. There seems to be an increasing threat to the trades as a whole, as our high school system continues to push students away from attending trade schools and colleges, and gears them towards universities and professional degrees. There's a disconnect between what our schools are teaching and what we as companies can offer.

Our schooling system promises high dollar payouts. The reality is much different. On a recent visit to another local kitchen cabinet manufacturer, there was a presentation by a professor from the local college in that area and he stated a case where students can expect to earn upwards of $35 an hour, with a pension and full benefits, just for finishing their program. This reality is grossly overstated, as a qualified cabinet-maker of equal skills can expect to earn about a half of this amount, just out of school.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all for your time, for allowing us to share our challenges and experiences operating as a business in the wood manufacturing sector in Ontario. We are positive and hopeful that we can resolve some of the challenges I've outlined and work together towards a better and stronger country from all sides.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Meyer.

Mr. Hébert, you are going to start us off.

[Richard Hébert, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. LeBlanc.

I was a paramedic for about 30 years in Quebec. I know how important it is to assist people, and I myself have felt a desire to help. I also know how important it is to secure the intervention site. Actually, if we are helping a person in a dangerous situation and put ourselves in danger, we then have two people in danger.

You mentioned the danger of fire, especially when it comes to a wood-framed structure. Are your fears warranted and, if so, what are they based on?

You gave us the example of fires that destroyed wood-framed buildings in Kingston and Vancouver. Could you tell us what is being done elsewhere?

You also told us about the Grenfell Tower fire in London. In your opinion, would the result have been different or more disastrous had the building been made of wood?

We all remember what happened in New York. The building suffered a progressive collapse. That building was not made of wood.

I recognize your desire to protect firefighters. We completely agree on that. That being said, I remind you that in Quebec, 60,000 jobs are tied to the forestry industry. Finally, I want to remind you—and you know this, of course—that there's no such thing as zero risk.

[Fred LeBlanc]

Thank you for the question. I think I heard it all through the translation and I apologize. In my full disclosure, I should have said that the only French I know is my last name, so I apologize if I've missed any of this.

I don't think it's fair to try to compare what happened on 9/11—with jet airliners crashing into a building and that additional fuel, plus the weight of those airliners and everything else, and the explosions that happened when those jet airliners hit a building that was made out of cement—to say, “Well, those are cement buildings, so they shouldn't have fallen or crumbled to the ground” by comparison to what some of our concerns are with wood-frame construction.

In the Kingston scenario, what I have learned from colleagues who were at the fire—I was not at the fire, as my vision had taken me off the job sooner than that—was that what was ironic, or strange if you will, was the fuel that was present because it was all wood and so much of it was not made out of cement. This was two o'clock in the afternoon on a nice, bright sunny day, very similar to this time of year, with about 100 construction workers on site.

To have a fire start and then grow to that volume, where it did so much damage to buildings not only adjacent to it but also across the street because of that type of radiant heat, is the concern we have. It taps into, not only all of our resources that we could provide in the city of Kingston—we're not the smallest city in the province—but it took resources from as far west as Belleville to as far east as Brockville to come in to assist with that type of fire that was burning out of control.

I think that it got the national attention because of the crane operator who was trapped and had to be rescued by helicopter.

I understand there is nothing that is zero risk, but in the codes, as written up until now, when we're talking about high-rise buildings, we're talking about essentially cement blocks and cement compartments. The fire does get compartmentalized and usually contained, regardless of what's going on. Unless there have been some changes to the buildings or mechanical failures that we've experienced with fire sprinkler systems, it rarely gets beyond the compartment. That's been my high-rise firefighting experience and that is a concern when we now take it to a combustible material.

For now, we may cover it up with drywall, but we all know that when people get into their apartments, condos, homes, or whatever, they start to change things. If they know that they have wood construction, they start pulling off the drywall because they want to see the exposed wood because it can be quite beautiful. Perhaps it's structurally sound, but what we're running into is that the innovations on the engineering side are failing to take in what's happening when our members are running into those buildings and staying inside those buildings. That's the problem that we have.

We want to make sure we take this in a very stepped approach. If we get into communities, like Kingston or smaller, and we start to build buildings such as high-rise buildings or other buildings that hold a lot of occupants, then I think we need to be, and we should be, responsible enough to take into consideration what protection resources there are. A building like this could now become fully engulfed because of the different type of fuel load that we're building it out of.

Are the resources there from a protection and response or from a prevention side and if not, what can we do? Do we provide something from a federal government for assistance to municipalities for their consideration to say, “We'll accept buildings like that in our community, but we get to apply for something that helps us beef up our inspection ranks and/or our emergency response.”

Those are the things that we're trying to say here. We're not saying that we're opposed to wood innovation or the forestry industry as a sector in the creation of jobs. We want that happening in our country, but we also want to be responsible about it when it comes to public and firefighters' safety.

[Richard Hébert, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

You talked about the Grenfell in London.

Was the main cause of the death of those poor people mainly poisoning or burns?

Everyone knows that poisoning is often the leading cause of the death of people in a fire.

[Fred LeBlanc]

My knowledge is very limited to media reports of what happened at the Grenfell Tower, but what happened, and why we're referencing it, is that it's an example of a building that was built to code many years ago but then it got renovated. They put on an exterior cladding that was a combustible material, not a non-combustible exterior cladding. This allowed that building to become overwhelmingly engulfed very quickly, to the point where the firefighters had difficulty. When you get in there and you start looking at high-rise buildings that have multiple occupants, it becomes a matter of evacuation and let the fire grow or can you suppress the fire and concentrate strictly on evacuation in a safe manner.

What happened there, in my opinion, was that fire grew so fast they didn't have the opportunity to even offer a safe egress for many of the occupants. Did they suffocate? Most likely. I think you're correct in your statement that most people who die in a fire die from suffocation versus from the heat and the flame. Most people don't even see the flame, they just die of smoke inhalation.

The reference is because of the combustible cladding and what that did in letting that fire grow to such a degree.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all our witnesses for attending committee today.

Mr. Meyer, I'd like to begin with you. Actually, I'd like to ask both presenters some questions, but I'd like to begin with you.

Our Prime Minister is just coming back from an impromptu failed trade expedition to China, and in some of your comments you referred to the Chinese competition that you're experiencing as a secondary manufacturer of wood products in the millworking business.

You've talked about the increased costs that you're incurring when it comes to salary and electricity. Have you considered at all what kind of impact furthering our trade with China would have on businesses like yours? We know right now there's about $90 billion a year of trade between our two countries, two-thirds of which is coming from China into Canada, and only one-third being reciprocated back to China. How do you think that would impact your business?

[Samuel Meyer]

Chinese materials are actually crippling our local manufacturers. We can buy just as many domestic materials. The same domestic materials we can buy imported. What they found with the imported materials right now is that the Chinese government was caught subsidizing to a point where they were dumping them at an unfair rate.

To give you perspective, a domestic plywood sheet costs anywhere from $10 to $15, and sometimes $20 more a sheet domestically than does an imported board. What that does is that I'm forced to buy the import because the costs just aren't there for us to buy the domestic.

To be honest, if I could buy all domestic, I would, but the fact is that when we're pricing all these jobs everyone else is bidding based on the import materials, and we're stuck going that way. When we want to use the domestic side, we're stuck in the same situation where we have minimum orders for the cost, and the price is that much more.

I don't know if, as a whole, as a country, it's worth expanding that, as strong an industry as the forestry industry is. If anything, I think it's hurting our mills. In the last few years alone we've had—don't quote me on the exact number—two or three major mills either go under or be repurchased by other organizations. As an industry as a whole, we're suffering.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

What you're suggesting is that in order for your particular business, and even your industry, to be competitive in today's market in Canada you have to import materials from China.

[Samuel Meyer]

Yes.

If it were created as a level playing field where the domestic materials were more on the same level as the imported materials, then we, the millwork companies, would be forced to buy domestic and we would all be on that level. If domestic were competitively priced with the imports, which is not feasible at this point because, like I said, the difference is a lot, then yes, we could make it work. But right now there is a difference, so right now we're hurting our industry by these imports.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Meyer.

Mr. LeBlanc, I'd like to ask you or your assistant, Mr. Hewitt, who did a very good job of reading, some questions.

When it comes to fire safety for the folks you represent, who we expect to go into these buildings and extinguish fires and rescue individuals.... There's been a lot of emphasis in the study of this committee on structural timber and laminated timber. You mentioned, or you referenced briefly in your comments, that there had been some studies and some testing that you're aware of. Do those studies and tests indicate that the fire retardant ability of structural timber is similar to steel?

[Fred LeBlanc]

I'll refer to Greg, if I can, on this one.

[Greg Hewitt]

We would go back and look at those studies. Our main point is that studies conducted in the laboratory may not capture what happens in an actual situation. They may have an average temperature, whereas a temperature in an actual fire might be much higher due to what's in the actual room.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Do those studies also take into consideration any toxins that would be emitted from the burning of the laminates involved in the timbers?

[Greg Hewitt]

That's certainly another concern we, as firefighters, would raise. Cancer is an epidemic among firefighters, and it comes from the toxins they encounter on the fire ground. That would be another thing to look at, for sure.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I notice that in a lot of our modern construction the floor joists are manufactured joists, and there has been concern expressed in the past that they don't have the structural integrity. When your firefighters are entering a building—and that's more on a residential basis—how much of a concern is there also for the structural timber, that it doesn't have the structural integrity that you need it to have when you're entering a burning building?

[Fred LeBlanc]

That is an ongoing concern when we get into what we refer to as “lightweight construction”, when it remains in an exposed situation. That's what we're talking about. We need to maybe not go so quickly here with being so permissive of tall wood buildings, given our concerns that we've had just on the residential side.

Can we find a way? That's quite possible, but the concern certainly is there. I get it. It checks a lot of boxes from a structural integrity situation, and this has been our overlapping concern with the national building code's not having firefighters' safety as an objective part of the code. What we have been told is that firefighter safety is the same as public safety. The objective of the code is to build it to allow enough time for the public to get out. That's usually when we're rolling up, as a lot of the public are running out. You've heard the phrase, “When you run out, we run in.” That's true. We are running in to save either as much of the structure as we can or anybody else who is trapped in there.

Yes, knowing that the integrity will last beyond just the egress of the public inside is a major concern for us.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Based on your experience as a firefighter and also from what you know, in a high-rise structure, would you feel more comfortable running into a timber structure or into a concrete and steel structure?