Natural Resources Committee on March 22nd, 2018

[Jennifer O'Connor]

Do you want to go again, Jamie?

[Jamie Meil]

We work with the Cement Association of Canada quite regularly. They're a big member, and every year we are looking at their product and at how it can be improved.

They are certainly moving that forward. They have innovative new products out right now in terms of cement. One's called Portland-limestone cement. For that product by itself, relative to regular Portland cement, as soon as you start using it—and you can pretty well use it in any application—you get a 10% reduction in your carbon footprint. This Portland-limestone cement has been around for about 30 years. In Europe, you're allowed to use percentages of up to 30% to 40% of that product in your concrete mix design.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

How does that product compare with wood for carbon sequestration over its life cycle?

[Jamie Meil]

Concrete doesn't really sequester carbon until it's set.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Sure.

[Jamie Meil]

On the carbonation side, it depends on the application. If it's on a roadway as opposed to a building, it'll sequester that carbon at different rates. It can be anywhere from 3% to 40%.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

There are other products that are on the market as well. I want to get a sense of how your organization establishes metrics so that they can be used in government procurement to determine whether greenhouse gas reduction goals are going to be met with any given material.

With respect to some new concretes and cements that are being made, I know that there were a bunch of patents in the early 2000s around using flue gas to create the calcium carbonate. Those were actually carbon-negative products, because they're removing flue gas that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. Those are going to be out of patent pretty soon.

Do you have metrics that would be available for government to use with respect to those materials?

[Jennifer O'Connor]

There are standards for doing life-cycle assessment of products that apply to all material, so we have the techniques and the mechanisms. A couple of the questions you've asked about wood products and cement and concrete are highlighting that there are areas that are still evolving in methodologies.

The Cement Association raised some important points: there are unresolved issues early in the life cycle for wood products that we're still sorting out the methods for, and there are unresolved issues for cement products at the end of the life cycle. Jamie was just mentioning that they do sequester. There's a difference between “store” and “sequester”—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Yes.

[Jennifer O'Connor]

—and we haven't quite worked into the methodologies yet how to properly credit concrete for what they do later in use and at end of life.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Maybe I can now turn a bit to the bill. Not everything in the bill that Mr. Cannings has proposed I would agree with, but there are some proposals about how we can better use government procurement to make sure we meet our clean energy goals and how can we make sure wood is not disadvantaged from other products in construction, because it seems we've heard a lot of testimony that we shouldn't be trying to show a preference for wood, but at the same time, there are a lot of impediments in building codes to the use of wood, so maybe levelling the playing field is worthwhile.

Do you think there's a role for government to play rather than at the contract award stage for the use or the preference for wood or greenhouse-gas-reducing products? Maybe the contract design stage or the standards development stage would be a more appropriate place for government to play a role in helping people select materials that are going to have a greenhouse gas benefit.

I open this to all three.

[Jennifer O'Connor]

I've been speaking a bit. Would you fellows like to go?

[Adam Auer]

I think we would probably agree that there absolutely is a role. As I think the Athena Institute would agree, there is a lot of work to be done on life-cycle inventory data. Other jurisdictions have done a good job of shoring up their national life-cycle inventory data in a way that supports the development of more advanced life-cycle tools. That's certainly a role government could play working on the standards, putting criteria into bids and inviting the private sector to innovate solutions around low-carbon resilience in a cost-effective way.

All of those things are things we would support, and they would inherently also require, I think, some work to continue to advance the LC methodologies and data.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Beaulieu, perhaps this is not what your association is asking for, but do you think it would be more appropriate for the government to intervene when contract requirements are established rather than at the end, when they are awarded?

[Gérald Beaulieu]

Mr. Whalen, thank you very much for the question.

It's not a matter of procurement policies requiring that wood be used. We are talking about the government setting an example. We are calling upon the regions to mobilize in order to create jobs from local resources. We also want to reduce the carbon footprint.

With the Wood Charter, the Government of Quebec does not impose the use of wood as a material, but asks people to consider the possibility of using it.

Let me remind you that, in 1941, the National Building Code prohibited the use of wood in buildings with more than four storeys. It was in the very particular context of fire safety.

In virtually every port city in the country, buildings made of solid wood and more than 100 years old have been converted into offices or apartments, and they are still very resilient.

The idea is to make sure that the use of wood is considered. This is no longer the natural reaction of decision-makers, since their studies did not teach them to use wood in the design of buildings.

The idea is not to favour one material over another, but to ensure that the use of wood is considered in the design of buildings and that we can demonstrate that—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu.

I guess we've heard a lot of testimony here already that it's “consider” over “prefer”, and I think we can probably arrive at some amendments to the proposed bill that achieve that goal.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you to all of witnesses for coming to committee this morning and providing some testimony.

Mr. Auer, I want to start with you. You indicated early on that our forest or wood industry is a challenged industry. We know the wood industry already sees quite a bit of government subsidy through FPInnovations. Millions of dollars every year are channelled in there.

Does the cement industry or the concrete industry have any such government funding?

[Adam Auer]

The only recent examples of government funding for the cement industry would be in the context of the Ontario cap-and-trade system where some of the auction revenue has been recycled to support our transition to lower carbon fuels. A similar program exists in British Columbia. To my knowledge, these would be the only two examples of government subsidy.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

So your industry doesn't receive any federal government funding—

[Adam Auer]

Not that I'm aware of, no.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

—for innovation or for...?

[Adam Auer]

There are research grants that flow through universities to study things like resilience, new products like high-performance concrete.... What am I missing?

[Steve Morrissey, Vice-President, Cement Association of Canada]

Low-carbon fuels.

[Adam Auer]

Yes, there is research doing life-cycle assessments around the carbon benefits of different lower-carbon fuels, for example.