Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 6th, 2018

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.

On the agenda

Secondary Supply Chain Products in the Forestry Sector in Canada
Committee Business

MPs speaking

James Maloney
TJ Harvey
Dave Van Kesteren
Jamie Schmale
Richard Cannings
Marc Serré
Shannon Stubbs
Nick Whalen

Also speaking

Alexander Marshall  Executive Director, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada
David Boulard  President, Ensyn Technologies Inc.
David Mackett  Community Development, Whitesand First Nation
Craig Toset  Business Development, Whitesand First Nation
Éric Baril  Acting Director General, Automotive and Surface Transportation, National Research Council of Canada
Nathalie Legros  Research Council Officer, Automotive and Surface Transportation, National Research Council of Canada

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

I have a final question, then, and it can be to either of you. If we make 233 tonnes of plastic this year—I think that's the number that you quoted in the previous answer—if we were to use all the lignin supply in Canada to replace plastic, how much would we get? If we used all of it, do we get 10 megatonnes? Do we get one megatonne? Do we get 100 megatonnes? I don't have a sense in my mind about what the replacement would be compared to oil and whether this is a significant or insignificant amount.

10:40 a.m.

Research Council Officer, Automotive and Surface Transportation, National Research Council of Canada

Nathalie Legros

That is a very hard question to answer.

Once again, we can't replace all plastic products with lignin. Lignin has its benefits, but also its drawbacks. We have to go step by step. For example, we could calculate the result of replacing 10% of polyurethane volumes with lignin.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Can you calculate that and send it to us?

10:40 a.m.

Research Council Officer, Automotive and Surface Transportation, National Research Council of Canada

Nathalie Legros

Certainly.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

It would help us very much to get an idea of the scale of these issues.

10:40 a.m.

Research Council Officer, Automotive and Surface Transportation, National Research Council of Canada

Nathalie Legros

Yes.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Thank you.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Baril and Ms. Legros. I appreciate your coming and taking the time to join us today. Unfortunately, we're out of time, so we're going to have to let you go on your way.

We're going to go quickly into committee business for a couple of minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]