Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Natural Resources for this opportunity to talk about the economic recovery.
The Quebec Wood Export Bureau represents an industry association of approximately 200 companies in five sectors of the wood industry: softwood lumber, hardwood, flooring, energy pellets, and the manufacture of wood constructions and building products.
I'm going to talk about the importance of our industry. According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study conducted in Quebec, our industry represents 142,000 jobs, contrary to the figures that were previously reported. It's made up of three sectors: forestry operations, which represents about 20,000 jobs; pulp and paper, which represents about 55,000 jobs; and wood products, which represents about 65,000 jobs. What's interesting is that the wood products sector represents about 970 companies. However, two-thirds of the jobs in the wood industry come from the secondary manufacturing value-added products sector in Quebec, which accounts for 63% of the companies in the sector.
I'll come back to the diversification strategy we discussed. As you all know, we've been dealing with the softwood lumber dispute for over 20 years. This is our sixth conflict. There are two ways to diversify the Canadian industry: either we sell our softwood lumber products to other foreign markets or we sell our softwood lumber products to make new value-added duty-free wood products. Both options have the same result: reducing the pressure of the conflict with the United States.
For the industry in western Canada, the Asian solution was ideal. Our friends in British Columbia have done a fantastic job over the last few years developing the market in Asia. For eastern Canada, the solution is more difficult geographically, and will instead be to create value-added products, which will then be exported both to the United States and overseas. It must be said that this production creates four times more value added than lumber. In addition to increasing our exports, we create more jobs. The American and global demand for this type of value-added product is growing strongly, due to the scarcity of labour and the increased use of wood in construction for reasons of fighting climate change.
This strategy was established in Quebec in 2016. The objective was to increase exports of value-added structural products from $400 million to $3 billion by 2030. In 2020, exports are worth $400 million; in 2014, they were worth $200 million. So exports have doubled, and we want them to increase to $3 billion.
Lumber industry exports to the United States are approximately $1.5 billion. By taking one-third of that, or $500 million, and making structural products, we get four times that value. We get $2 billion worth of exports. That's the strategy we've been employing for the last three years. There's a lot of work ahead of us, but the outlook is excellent.
Construction in North America will be a key component of the recovery. According to economists, it will be a V-shaped recovery. The fundamentals are all in place in the United States for a very strong construction recovery. With housing starts lower than historical averages, there is room for growth. There is also a new craze for single-family homes outside urban centres. COVID-19 is creating a phenomenon: everyone wants to get out of the cities. It's a new trend.
Measures to combat climate change are also being refined around the world, mainly in Europe, creating additional demand for wood construction, which is preferred over other more energy-intensive materials. In this regard, I fully agree with Mr. Roberts, who spoke this morning. We have gone to great lengths to develop policies for materials or technologies to increase wood construction.
I think we need to move to a performance stage and stop talking about materials and technologies. Instead, we need to put in place policies that include performance obligations in terms of carbon emissions in kilograms per square metre and energy expenditure in kilowatts per square metre, and let industry do its job. I am telling you that the wood industry will win hands down and our market share will grow.
This is more noble than trying to impose prescriptive measures. In the long term, as Europe has shown, when performance measures are put in place and everyone has the right to achieve this performance, the results in terms of growth in wood demand are greater than those of a prescriptive policy.
In terms of the drivers of success for this industry, there are four—