Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #88 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 buildings.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #88 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 buildings.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I appreciate your comments.
I think basically your presentation summed up exactly what we have been talking about the last few meetings when we were studying this bill, that picking winners and losers in the marketplace bidding on government contracts does not benefit anyone. Especially when you're talking about government, you're also spending taxpayer money, so you made a good point that, by choosing one sector over another, it distorts the price artificially and unnecessarily as well.
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Steel Producers Association
Yes, that generally tends to be the knock-on effect from this.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Yes, and I think that's a very important part we need to recognize if you exclude steel, cement, and you name it.
You also talked about the innovation sector, too. Over the years, wood, has improved based on the fact that it had to compete with other sectors, and that's a good thing. As you pointed out, if you exclude a whole bunch of others for the sake of one, you basically slow down the innovation, because wood would have the marketplace.
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Steel Producers Association
Yes. I'd make an argument that you would not only slow down the innovation in wood, but by disincentivizing a material like steel or a material like cement from participating in the infrastructure environment, you would disincentivize innovation there.
Steel, from an infrastructure perspective, in terms of its strength, its weight, and its generalized capacity, has improved immeasurably in the last however many years. This is a very different kind of steel that we're talking about. As for recyclability as well, our ability to reuse the product has improved significantly.
So yes, I'd argue that you're not just disincentivizing innovation in wood, but you would be artificially stalling innovation in other sectors.
March 20th, 2018 / 9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you very much.
I have only a little bit longer.
Mr. Marks, I will quickly go to you. I'm from a rural area, so I get what you're saying about resources and fire departments. In my riding, there are probably a dozen or fewer full-time firefighters, so most of the rest are volunteers. As you mentioned in your statement, equipment, resources, and training vary from station to station. If we were to get a federal building in my area, and this wood bill goes forward, this could pose very serious concerns to many, I'm sure, given the fact that response times aren't probably as good as they would be in the city.
9:20 a.m.
Assistant to the General President, Canadian Operations, International Association of Fire Fighters
Yes, response times, the number of personnel you're getting at the scene.... It's even dependent on what resources they have available to them. The problem does exist. The simple fact in this country is that there is no required response capability for municipal fire departments, even in large urban centres.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
As you mentioned in your speech, you're saying budgets are being cut. I think we're all probably seeing municipalities trying to struggle with that.
9:20 a.m.
Assistant to the General President, Canadian Operations, International Association of Fire Fighters
Yes. Most fire department budgets are predominantly made up of the wages that go to the employees. When they start cutting fire department budgets, it comes down to one thing. It's personnel.
9:20 a.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you to all for being here. I appreciate your presentations.
I'm going to start with Mr. Galimberti, on steel. In Canada, British Columbia and Quebec already have “wood first” or charte du boispolicies. The B.C. one has been in place for almost a decade now. That's a significant chunk of Canada.
Could you comment first of all on the effects that has had on the steel industry in Canada?
9:20 a.m.
President, Canadian Steel Producers Association
It's difficult to take a granular approach to examining it. Clearly, there has been an incentive to using wood in those markets. We've seen increased wood construction in those markets. Those are jobs the steel industry is not going to participate in so there's an effect. That is a potential sale or business or piece of the economic pie that the steelworkers in Canada were not allowed to fairly compete for.
9:25 a.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
We heard at our last meeting from British Columbia that one of the reasons they brought in that policy was the way procurement was set up for building schools, for instance, you could pretty much only build a school with steel and concrete. There was a disincentive for wood so they wanted to have wood considered. At its heart that is really what this bill is all about. It's not about tilting the field in favour of wood per se, but just getting the government to consider wood in building, partly because of these newly engineered wood construction methods.
You say a third of the steel industry is involved in building. I don't know what federal procurement is, but you say you're worried about the knock-on effect. At most, we're talking about an impact of 8% or something.
If all the policies from Quebec and France, for instance, are trying to get 30% of their buildings built with wood, it seems it would have a minimal impact when you consider that steel and concrete have had the playing field to themselves for the past century. We're just trying to get the government to consider wood.
Can you comment on that?
9:25 a.m.
President, Canadian Steel Producers Association
Our position is it should be a fair and open competition where the right material is chosen for the right job. I tend to believe in a lot of those instances, given the performance of the material, given its advantages in construction, given the advantages from a GHG perspective over the full life cycle, that in a fair and open competition on equal grounds, steel is going to be the material that prevails. A “wood first” policy would not generally be acceptable.
You used the example of a school. If you were looking at a construction where the right solution for that particular school involves a combination of wood, cement, and steel—whatever the solution ultimately is—so long as there is no undue interference and the design professionals and professionals who are taking a look at how this building will perform from a construction-through-maintenance-through-decommissioning perspective are concerned, then that's the decision.
9:25 a.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
If I got your comments right earlier, if you wanted the government to look at the life-cycle costs of the material, the life-cycle carbon footprint of the material, for the government to consider wood or any other material, you would be—
9:25 a.m.
President, Canadian Steel Producers Association
—yes, the right solution.
Life-cycle analysis generally is an evolving science. I'll speak to steel specifically. Production in steel, the way we make steel, is constantly evolving. I would argue that no industry is more focused on reducing its GHG emissions than steel. A life-cycle analysis is not a static thing. These evolve, so I would argue that professionals should be allowed to make that choice on a go-forward basis. Your LEED certifications are going to change over time. What constitutes a green building is going to change over time. I don't think we should be locking in policies that grant preference to a particular material.
9:25 a.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Mr. Marks, I have a quick question. You talked about wood-frame construction of 12 storeys. I just want to clarify that we're talking about mass timber construction of anything over six storeys or something like that, and you say that you lack the equipment and training. You talked about two fires that occurred during construction. You talked about charges that were laid. Would it be fair to say that when we're building with wood in larger buildings, if they're built correctly, they're built like the Brock Commons building at UBC, where fire protection was added to each storey as it was being constructed? These buildings are as safe as any other buildings, and once they're constructed, they're just as safe to live in or to fight fires in as any steel or concrete building.
9:30 a.m.
Assistant to the General President, Canadian Operations, International Association of Fire Fighters
As I said, even in response to Mr. Garis' quote, theoretically, and certainly based on the codes and everything, I would agree with your statement. The concern we have is that the building is never modified, never changed, or if those things happen, that all the same kinds of safeguards, analysis and inspection, and preventative materials are followed up and the building retains that kind of safety. Experience has shown us that this doesn't always happen, and when we continue to cut back in so many sectors on the oversight of building codes, fire codes, and everything, there is an inherent risk.
Certainly to your point about buildings under construction, it is a different issue. There's no question that the experience has shown that these buildings, in the construction phase, appear to be much more at risk. A lot of things have been done to try to mitigate that, but certainly the experience we've seen in Canada in the last few years gives us an idea of the fuel load that exists inside those buildings when we see what has happened at the construction stage. If they're encapsulated, if everything works properly, they're very safe; if something doesn't, we know that they have a much larger fuel load than a steel- or concrete-based building.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
To make it clear again, you're talking about stick-frame construction, not mass timber construction in that case, because all the evidence shows—and we'll hear more evidence in the next hour—how mass timber buildings react very differently from wood stick-frame buildings.
9:30 a.m.
Assistant to the General President, Canadian Operations, International Association of Fire Fighters
Mass timber does react differently from traditional wood-frame construction, but with mass timber, there's combustibility potential there as opposed to steel or concrete.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Thank you, everyone, for coming.
My first question is to Mr. Galimberti. Thank you very much for your testimony. You talked about the market forces that will help with greater innovation. Can you talk to me about whether at present the industry has been involved, in this jurisdiction or others, in construction that actually has put material together that is a type of wood-steel hybrid? Is there anything being done in that regard at all? I'm just curious.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Environment, Canadian Steel Producers Association
Actually, in speaking of innovation, the Canadian domestic steel industry is really moving forward on this idea of incorporating wood into steelmaking. That adds a means of reducing our total CO2 emissions as an industry. The Canadian industry, through an organization called the CCRA, is actually looking at—we haven't coined a name yet—this idea of bio-steel, or wood-based steel, in which we use waste-wood pellets or any wood from the domestic wood industry and turn it into biochar, which is a material that can then be put into the steelmaking process. Through that, we can actually reduce CO2 emissions, from one of our facilities, by up to 500,000 tonnes per year. As a carbon-intensive industry, this is a very big, innovative step we can take.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Mary Ng Liberal Markham—Thornhill, ON
Right. A consideration for wood, then, is...would it help accelerate or explore that greater level of collaboration? Overarchingly, it is to reduce GHG targets, but are you saying there is a real opportunity to have more products that include wood in construction products?
