Evidence of meeting #83 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 lignin.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
What's the trade-off? What are the gigajoules, for instance, on that?
President, Ensyn Technologies Inc.
We're at approximately 55% of the heating value of diesel.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Thank you, everyone, for being here.
Just so you know where my line of questioning is from, we've had a series of meetings on this topic for I don't know how many weeks now. I can't speak for everyone, but I think we understand the value that groups like yours bring to the forestry sector. However, as we go through this, we've noticed something that we might want to take a round at. We're trying to understand the role of government, and that has been a normal question we all have here. We're wondering if the traditional way government has been involved is working for everyone.
Some of the witnesses beforehand have come up with some different ideas. Each one of you has mentioned it, kind of. This isn't Liberal versus Conservative, because some of this funding was under the former Conservative government. This is basically to find out if what the government is doing is the right thing, or if we can maybe make some changes to it. That's where our line of questioning is coming from, just so you know. These questions aren't to badger. It's to get more information.
I will start with you two gentlemen. You're absolutely right. I couldn't agree with you more. The biggest way to solve the issue of poverty is a job. It sounds as if you have a well-paying job, not a government program, and that's what you want to do for your citizens. That is remarkable. That's one of the reasons socialism doesn't work.
Sorry, Richard.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
So you don't want the government to give them money?
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
No that's not what I said. What they did say, which was very interesting, was that they were forced to spend about $1 million, they said, to fight government, or go through their process.
Because of where you are in your funding you were forced to use $1 million of taxpayer dollars to fight government for a project that seemed to hit all the right cylinders on what another level of government was looking for. There has to be a better way.
Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
Exactly. What happened here for our project is the project is ahead of policy. We've had to go through things because nobody had done it before. Craig and I were told we'd never get the wood or we'd never get a power purchase. Were we kidding, we thought they were going to give us a power purchase agreement? Then Environment came along and said we had to do a renewable energy approval for a five-megawatt biomass. It made no sense; they're all over Europe.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
That's going to create jobs. There's precedent, there is opportunity.
Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
It's going to create jobs. That's why the Minister of Environment...they're talking about a fast track. If you have a project that clearly shows benefits to the environment likes ours does, plus socio-economic gain, why are we saying you have to go through this when we should straight-line it? We would be two years ahead of schedule.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
How many years; two years behind this fighting government?
Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
It took us two years to do the REA.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
That's two more years you've been using the digital field, two more years your people have been dropping out of high school, have been living in poverty, with despair. That's two more years to fight government; you could have been ahead of the game.
Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
It's very difficult, but I think I see that change now. I really do. I see a change in all parties. Both governments recognize we need to do things differently. We need to combine, we need to stop the silos, environment funding from the low-carbon economy comes from the Ministry of the Environment, yet it's a forestry project. It all comes together now. We've had to live on fiscal to fiscal, and I think one thing where the government...we developed a funding round table. We invited everybody to the table, federal and provincial, every program, even if they didn't have funding.
We almost challenged them and said this is what we were trying to do; could they help us? I think what you can do as a government...Ontario is doing more of it. Come together and look at each other's funding programs and how they can help. Some of our funders couldn't fund one particular thing in a project. They couldn't fund project management, yet project management is such a key thing in a project like this, but the other funders said no, that was one of their cost categories. We left it up to Canada and Ontario on most occasions to figure out the right mix in helping us move forward. The fiscal to fiscal is very hard when you've got a project to develop like this. As I say, if we had been a bigger company, or had the investors to come in and do it, we would probably have been done in three years' time, not the time it's taken us since 2009.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I agree with you, and again this isn't Liberal versus Conservative because this has been happening for years. We're just discussing issues that might improve the system.
I have a question for both of you. I only have a minute left so let's see if I can fit this in.
David, you mentioned your project in Quebec and Mr. Marshall brought that up as well. In this project between the Canadian and Quebec governments, is a $76.5-million investment, if I read your news release correctly, about $27.4 million in private sector...? That's about 26% of private sector dollars in this project, and the rest is government dollars. We recognize government has a role—and I have 15 seconds—and we also want to reduce the risk to taxpayers. Is there a formula that might work better? Obviously government money works well, but is there a better way?
President, Ensyn Technologies Inc.
Is there a better way? I think there are two aspects. When you're looking at a project you're always faced with capital, and you can't go to a bank for innovative products. You can try. I'm thrilled to see BDC and EDC funding that will free up capital for organizations like us, and we're in discussion with them, but the reality is there is a funding gap. Our project is to confirm that it works. The ability for the government to step in where there aren't other sources of funding—
Conservative
President, Ensyn Technologies Inc.
I think so. I think the reality is there's a gap. I can't define the gap.
February 6th, 2018 / 9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
What about what Mr. Marshall said about a tax cut?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to have to stop you there. I was trying to let him answer.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I did have questions. We can talk after.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you, all, for being here this morning. I'm going to start with Mr. Mackett and Mr. Toset.
It's just a wonderful story that you've told here, very inspiring. I've been hearing from other first nations. I'm from British Columbia, and I was just at a meeting in Prince George where the Fort Ware First Nation talked about their new electrical generation plant using wood to get them off diesel.
You say you're the first of your kind in Canada; I'm not sure what parameters you put around that. Is there any dialogue among first nations across Canada on this? Are you going out and telling everybody that story? This is something we hear all the time, about getting first nations and other remote communities off diesel, what they could do. Also the story of getting that wood from the big companies is another story I hear.
You seem to have come in at a lucky time, but I'm just wondering if there's a role that the federal government could play in talking to the provinces, because that allocation is a provincial thing, getting allocations for communities for this purpose.
Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
A couple of things. It's the first of its kind in the fact that we're doing the wood pellet plan as an economic development piece. Other communities have replaced their electricity, but nothing on this magnitude. We have been all over Canada, from Whitehorse to Vancouver. We did a first nations environmental conference a couple of weeks ago, and the response from the other first nations was incredible. What we're trying to develop is a “first nation to first nation” business relationship, where we can help those communities get off diesel through the use of our pellets.
It's a very unique concept. They're supporting our business; we're supporting them. On the access to fibre, I don't know about the other jurisdictions, but we had to go through the competitive wood supply. When the industry collapsed in 2008-09, there was an abundance of wood.
We didn't wait around. We put a team together and we put in a business plan and said that this was what we wanted to do with the wood. People defend their wood, even when they're in bankruptcy. They say, “That's our wood.” We've seen that a lot. “No, you can't take my wood.” Well, they're in bankruptcy.
What we've done, I think, is just fit a non-traditional forestry project in a traditional forestry area, which is now going to benefit traditional forestry. We're doing those things they normally can't do. To access fibre in the other provinces...I don't know how they do it in each province.
In Ontario, you apply for the wood. If there's available wood, you give them the business plan and a facility licence application, and if they accept that, you have the wood.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thanks for that.
To follow up, it is inspiring. We always hear of these remote first nations that have huge unemployment, huge social problems because of that poverty. To hear this story where you're headed in the right direction is really remarkable and inspiring.