Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much.

I think that's the end of my time.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Patzer.

You were right on time. I appreciate that.

Mr. Sidhu, you're next.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone, for providing valuable insights into the industry.

Mr. Renou, you spoke briefly about biodegradable masks. On that, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for the work that you're doing in researching and developing PPE, particularly around developing face masks made from wood fibre that are expected to be biodegradable through the mask pack project.

This is the type of innovation we need, and it showcases how all types of industries are coming together to protect Canadians during this pandemic.

Can you update us on the efforts in this area and share any lessons learned so far?

[Stéphane Renou]

Yes, absolutely.

In terms of progress we have made to this point, we have found the recipe to make the filtration layer. We, like every Canadian research institution, are struggling with the actual tests and certification, as there is a lot of variation that creates a lot of discussion. But that's all good. That's scientists arguing with one another about this being better than that, but we have solutions out there for the filtration media. Now we're working on the other layers. We have five solutions in the works, and I'm expecting results within the next few weeks, by Christmas, so that I will be able to say that I can make a fully biodegradable mask with those three layers on a tissue or paper machine; that's the key.

From there, here's a lesson learned. A tissue machine could produce anywhere between one million and ten million masks per day. To do that we would need to displace what the tissue machine is doing. The incentive for the companies needs to be there. The collaboration between all the members of the supply chain needs to be there. It's getting the team together into a highly competitive market especially in the tissue world. If there's one place in pulp and paper where all of the companies are competing, it's the tissue market, on which a lot of them depend. We need to get them to respond to a procurement need. The solution will be there if we need it. Now it's a matter of getting all of our ducks in a row to make it happen, across procurement, Health Canada, technical solutions organizations, and pulp and paper companies. It's getting the Canadian solution all together and really focusing on the fact that we need this now.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that, Mr. Renou. We look forward to seeing that product, especially when we're seeing all of our garbage cans filling up with all of these disposable masks.

Next, can you speak more to the importance of NRCan's transformative technologies program? What types of technological advancements does funding like this enable?

[Stéphane Renou]

Absolutely. If you look at the different sources of funding that my organization or the industry bet on in terms of transforming the industry, the TT program, the transformative technologies program, is the bedrock of everything. That's where we explore each technology that can transform the industry and bring it from a low-technology level to a higher-technology level.

From there we can start to make those alliances, those demonstration projects, those next-step projects. That's why we can look at everything from forestry 4.0, which we just talked about, namely broadband, to the industrialization of construction to bioproducts ranging from bioplastic lignin in asphalt to carbon fibre from wood. Every possible stream of bioproduct is explored under the TT program. It's the bedrock. It's from that money, from that effort, that we start everything. From there we can do the rest.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

You touched briefly on the priorities of FPInnovations. Looking forward, what opportunities do you see for areas in the bioeconomy? Where would you recommend the government focus its efforts?

[Stéphane Renou]

I think there are two things that are really important in making it real at some point. I'm a scientist. I love science. I can do science every day. But making the bioeconomy real is about taking one, two, or three things and really focusing on pushing them through commercialization and scale-up. If I look at bioplastics, there's been literature and scientists have been working on bioplastics for 40 years. We do wonderful things in the labs. What is real and what is not? Pick a few battles and carry them through so that we can prime this bioeconomy.

I think that's the most important thing, going forward. I'm looking at bioplastics. I'm looking at what we call “regenerated” fibre. What we do in the labs now is that we take wood fibre—it's beautiful, of course, but the shapes and forms are difficult to work with—and we dissolve it. Then we reconstruct fibre from it. We can add biochemistry into it and do everything from diapers to carbon fibres to high-strength materials to composite. You recreate, basically, all the bioproducts you can do with the classical petroleum chemistry.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have 30 seconds.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Okay. I have one last question for FPAC Canada.

Ms. Lindsay or Mr. Nighbor, we've seen the importance of paper and pulp products in the use of PPE, sanitary wipes, hospital gowns and many other necessary products. Mr. Renou talked about biodegradable masks. Can you share more about what work the forest product firms are doing on the PPE front, other than on biodegradable masks?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Be super quick.

[Derek Nighbor]

I can think of the Harmac mill on the west coast, which is making pulp for medical gowns. I think the biggest thing is that we're exporting a lot of uniquely Canadian premium reinforced pulp that's going out of the country and coming back in as PPE. I think there's an opportunity to do more on the value-add side, leveraging our natural resources here at home.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Great. Thank you.

Mr. Simard, over to you.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Renou, you provided a fine example of biorefineries.

The forest industry often focuses on commodities. It's good to capture carbon, but we can go much further. The Europeans did this by choosing to build biorefineries.

How would Canada benefit from entering the race to produce bioproducts by building biorefineries?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Anyone is free to answer.

[Stéphane Renou]

The benefit would simply be to rank higher in the value chain. If we don't move higher, our pulp or fibre will remain in demand in all the markets, since our forest is exceptional given its life cycles. Our forest's carbon value is phenomenal because this value is very renewable. Everyone wants to use our fibre for its life cycle value. However, if we can process the fibre higher up in the value chain, then we can tap into more markets. Through a simple transformation involving a few steps, we'll move up the value chain and even attract investment here.

More broadly speaking, the main plastic buyers will be major chemical companies such as BASF, Dow and so on. These companies will be the end buyers. They can process our fibre at their facilities. We can also encourage them to process our fibre in our areas.

That's the biggest economic benefit.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

What government action would be required to establish this type of industry? The transformation of the pulp and paper sector costs companies a fortune, and they don't necessarily have the required capital. What steps could the federal government take to make these biorefineries a reality?

[Stéphane Renou]

The most important step, as we proposed today for the budget consultations, is to help the industry by funding activities that will enable it to scale up.

This raises the issue of how to reduce the risks associated with capital investments. As I said earlier, I could conduct a small-scale laboratory experiment in a test tube and it will always work. However, the challenge is to conduct the experiment on a large scale. What are the major risks of scaling up? I must do it to find out.

Before starting a chain on their end to see whether it works, the major chemical companies in this world, such as BASF, Michelin, Dow or DuPont, won't ask me for two grams of a substance for analysis purposes. They'll ask for tonnes. We did this in Thunder Bay when we created the organic TMP process. This process creates a tonne of lignin, sugar and sugar streams with different compositions.

This gives us the opportunity to deal with the major companies in this world and to start technical discussions with them. We show them what we can do with the fibre and how much is needed in order to have a technical discussion at the manufacturing level. We must invest in scaling up so that we can deal with the major players in the sector.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Dallain, I went to visit you this summer. I was surprised to see how much you can do with biomass.

Can you tell the committee about concrete cases of bioproducts or bioenergy that you've managed to produce at SEREX?

[Patrick Dallain]

I can provide a few examples of projects that we're currently working on.

We use resinous species to extract bark, which can then be used as raw material to manufacture adhesives to make wood panels, for example. A wood panel contains about 10% adhesive material, which comes from oil. This adhesive can be replaced by an adhesive made from bark. The result is an even more biosourced wood panel. We said earlier that biosourced products should be encouraged.

We also managed to produce insulating foams using the tannins from the bark. We have a project under way with four different companies to make biocidal products, which are used to disinfect surfaces by eliminating bacteria or as preservatives in cosmetic products. These biocidal agents are completely biosourced. They come from the forest biomass. This is just one example. I don't know whether I have the time to give other examples, which concern energy.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Simard. You were right on time.

Mr. Cannings, we'll go over to you.

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

Again, thank you to the witnesses.

I'll start off with you, Mr. Renou. You mentioned the biorefineries that European countries are building. You suggested that we could be looking at building these types of biorefineries across Canada in small rural towns that have been hit with reductions in the forest industry. In British Columbia, as people have mentioned, we have any number of examples of that.

I guess my question is twofold. How much fibre do these biorefineries need? Is this something that we could fit into the forest sector as it is now and not impinge on it? Or would it be something that would replace, say, a sawmill that is making two-by-fours now and uses less fibre so that it could fit into the scenario where, in British Columbia especially, we're going to be in a fibre crunch for the coming decades? Is this something where we could provide more jobs for less fibre? I think that's one of the big challenges we have facing the forest industry, at least here in British Columbia.

[Stéphane Renou]

Absolutely, the case of British Columbia is challenging with regard to the access to fibre and all the natural calamities that didn't help with the amount of fibre that is available.

It's interesting to look today at British Columbia and the efforts of Canfor, which has dabbled a bit with some partners around biofuels and is making some progress there. There is a potential for adding to any paper mill or sawmill you see a unit that creates bioproducts. On the pulp and paper side, the advantage is that you will use a lot of installation in terms of effluent management, in terms of chemical plants in general, especially if it's a kraft mill. You can do a lot of the unit operation using the current equipment. The investment must be worth it in terms of keeping that plant up to date in all its dimensions, but you can add too. There's a value.

In terms of a sawmill, when you think about the different residues, you can also have processes that can be added to a sawmill to create a certain type of bioproduct. That's exactly what we need to think about: adding to those mills an extra step. That said, to get there we need to de-risk. We need to help the pulp and paper industry and the wood industry get into that new wave of bioreactors, of enzymes and bacteria that you need to play with to create those bioproducts, because that's a path that is a bit new for all the industries. That's part of the challenge.

In terms of creating new jobs, yes, it has this potential. It creates new types of jobs. It's actually interesting. I was thinking about Alberta the other day after having some discussions with folks in Alberta. There are so many skills in the petrochem industry that I want to go and grab today to come and help me on the bio side. All those process engineers, all those people who are used to developing large-scale mills and operations, chemistry, reactors, they can be used also in the bioeconomy. It's about making that transformation. It's about making that step, if I have answered your question.