Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

In talking about softwood lumber tariffs, I recently heard that now it's now cheaper in many ways to buy lumber from Europe than it is to buy it here. In my riding, companies are filling in the eastern North American part of their business by importing lumber from Romania or Germany. I'm just wondering how that is affecting your business.

[Timothy Priddle]

There's some coming from Europe and some from South America.

One of your previous witnesses in the last session was talking about pine coming out of Maine and New Hampshire. We buy a fair bit of white pine. We get most of it from Quebec and Ontario and a little bit out of Maine and New Hampshire. There is more and more wood coming out of Romania and Bulgaria. It hasn't affected our business that much yet, but I can see it coming with this countervailing duty in place, and hopefully we get rid of that as soon as possible.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I've got so many things to ask you.

You mentioned competition from China, with low labour standards and low environmental standards. I was wondering if you might want to comment on how that stands now. It sounded as though it was a while ago. What might your message to the government be about free trade agreements with China?

[Timothy Priddle]

Yes, I think it would be important for people within the government to travel to China to see what the working conditions are like in some of the plants.

We produce a lot of handrailing, newel posts, flooring, and that sort of thing for homes. We have to have air quality tests done in our plant. We have to get a permit for our dust collector. It has to not release anything into the environment. Sound conditions.... More importantly, we have to make sure our workers are safe.

If you travel to China and look into some of those plants, you'll see that's just not the case at all. The government is, I think, progressing a little bit in China on that front, but the conditions are still terrible. You wouldn't want your kids or grandkids working in some of the plants that I see in China.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay.

I'll just make a quick comment about German technology. We have that same issue in plants in my riding, so I'm fully behind you on that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you to our witnesses.

Unfortunately, we're out of time, which always seems to be a problem here when we get into these interesting discussions. Yours is no exception to that.

You are the last witnesses in this study we're doing, and so we close strong, I have to say. Thank you very much.

We're going to suspend for about 30 seconds while we release the witnesses, and then we have a couple of items we have to deal with in committee business. If everybody could stick around without getting out of their seat, I'd be grateful.

[Proceedings continue in camera]