Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 27th, 2018

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Absolutely, without doing preferred....yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Cannings, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Schmale.

I'm going to start with you, Ms. Silva. In your presentation, you mentioned concerns around this legislation, in that if it gave preference or even consideration to wood there might be some regional problems. I'm assuming you were referring to trade allegations and how this could open up problems with that. I'm just wondering, first of all, if there are any examples of that, where regions have said that this discriminates against their region because they don't have any steel factories and they don't have any sawmills or whatever. Are there any examples of that?

[Veronica Silva]

I'll let my colleague Matthew speak to that because he's the procurement expert. I'm the architect.

[Matthew Sreter]

I'm not aware of whether there are any examples related to concerns raised. What I can surmise is simply this: the examples I've heard here today are not necessarily at the federal level of government contracting. What we're talking about here today is the federal level of government contracting and federal legislation.

When we're talking about federal government contracting, we have at the federal level certain obligations in the international realm. I think we have 11 trade agreements that apply, and each one of those trade agreements talks to government contracting and has very specific provisions that speak to prohibited offsets for local development. They speak to non-discrimination among trading partners. They speak to treating suppliers and trading partners as equivalent to national treatment. That also has permeated within our CFTA and is espoused by our legislative and regulatory obligations.

For commitments that have been made either through policy or at a provincial level, I'm not necessarily surprised that they haven't garnered international interest. When we put something in law at the federal level, that in my mind would garner international interest and consideration as to whether or not, prima facie, the law is in compliance with our obligations, a de jure component or, in fact, de facto, whether an application of that law would provide in any way preferential treatment to suppliers, either Canadian or within the Canadian region. That was where that concern was raised in terms of Ms. Silva's statement.

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

I would just say in terms of provincial situations that the other big thing in my riding is wine. When the B.C. government opened up the possibility of grocery stores selling B.C. wine, they immediately attracted international trade allegations from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia because it said “B.C. wine”. Here we have a situation that doesn't say “B.C. wood” or “Canada wood”. It just says “wood”. Our big trading partner, the United States, produces a lot of wood, so it wouldn't restrict them from access to those projects. From a common sense point of view, I get the impression that this may not be a huge problem. That's why I was wondering if there were any examples that you were aware of.

[Matthew Sreter]

I can cite numerous articles of trade agreements that we find a high likelihood both in law and in practice would be contrary to what is currently cited within the bill, and if the underlying crux of the bill is the promotion of the use of wood, then perhaps consideration—which I heard the member was open to—of a non-prescriptive element would be something that you would consider, or the committee would consider.

The other element that, from our point of view, should be considered is that many of these considerations and decisions are made at what we loosely call the “needs analysis stage”, where we're looking at the requirements of our client departments and agencies, for building in this case, what exactly the technical specifications are, the codes that need to be adhered to, and what possible materials can go into meeting those requirements, and then we're setting up a procurement strategy toward that. Those decisions are made well in advance of the award. They're made at the procurement requirement-setting stage, and that's something that I'll leave for this committee to consider as well.

[Veronica Silva]

May I add to that, because I think that's the point that is key from the design and construction perspective?

The approach that PSPC has taken in terms of its development of option analysis doesn't only take a look at the technical requirements of a project. It's actually alongside and then primarily takes a look at the GHG reductions associated with different options to meet those technical requirements, and that is a significant change in the way that we, PSPC, for our own projects, have undertaken the analysis and design requirements stage.

[Matthew Sreter]

An example of this, if you look at another kind of industry, if you will, is PSPC's light duty vehicle procurement, where we have moved into using hybrid electric vehicles, and we are looking at the performance element of that, which is the reduction of GHG emissions, CO2 emissions, as part of our evaluation of the overall procurement, and to date we've been highly successful.

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

Thank you.

I'll quickly turn to Mr. Kozij and Mr. Mohammad.

Talking about codes, I understand Quebec has changed its code to allow wood construction to 12 storeys. Is that true? Could you elaborate on this performance-based code you're working toward? Would that allow 40-storey wood buildings if they performed the same?

[Mohammad Mohammad]

Quebec is probably the first jurisdiction in Canada to support tall wood buildings up to 12 storeys. The way it happened in Quebec is that they adapted the mid-rise first, up to six storeys, and then they were really proactive in that response, especially after the Quebec wood charter came into effect. They published some kind of a pre-approved, let's call it, alternative solution. I don't know if many of you are familiar with the alternative solution. This is a way actually to allow us to go beyond the code. This is how UBC's Brock Commons and also the 13-storey building in Quebec were designed and built, by demonstrating that those buildings can perform or have the same level of safety, as a minimum, in terms of fire and structural, as a typical code-compliant concrete building.

So what they did is they took the design of the 13-storey building. They put it as an established pre-approved recipe. Think of wood. So this is actually a recipe for buildings up to 12 storeys. This is how you do it to meet the intent of the Quebec building code, and this is actually being used as a way to.... The standing committee and the test group at the national building code, the model code of Canada, is actually using that as the basis for moving forward in addition to all the technical information that's being developed, with funding from the government of Canada, of course.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Go ahead, Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for their presentations and their work in this field.

My first question deals with the national building code of Canada. We heard earlier about what is being done in Quebec. We also heard about changes made in 2015 regarding six-storey buildings. Other witnesses spoke about changes that could be made to the national building code of Canada to allow 12-storey buildings.

Is it official then that the national building code of Canada will be changed in 2020 to allow buildings of up to 12 storeys high? If not, what other measures could the government take?

I believe that Mr. Mohammad and Mr. Kozij spoke about this earlier.

[Mohammad Mohammad]

The code process in Canada is a very complex process. The technical committee for the code, which actually discusses and provides recommendations to the Canadian Commission on Buildings and Fire Codes, which is a very high authority in Canada that oversees the building code, actually spends a lot of time.... They are experts. Fire engineers, building officials, firefighters, architects, and structural engineers are all part of that committee. Then they look at, okay there's a proponent proposing in this case, the taller wood building of twelve.... They discuss that based on the information available. If they feel they are comfortable based on their expertise, then they will basically okay the proposal of the 12-storey building in this case. Then it goes to a public review. This is part of the code process, which is open for anybody to provide comments just to make sure that the public, which was not part of the discussions at the code committee, has the opportunity to provide input into the process.

With regard to the process, the public review has been completed, and now it's back again to the code committee to discuss. We don't have assurances—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Mohammad, I'm going to have to interrupt you and ask you to stop. The lights are flashing, which means the bells are ringing.

[Mohammad Mohammad]

Okay. All right.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're going to have to stop there and head over to the House.

I apologize.

Thank you all very much for joining us today and contributing to this discussion.

The meeting is adjourned.