Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today.

Welcome to meeting number six of the natural resources committee. I'm sorry that we're starting a little bit late. We had some technical challenges, as is periodically the case in our current environment, but nonetheless we're good to go here, so thank you for joining us.

Just so everybody knows, in the last 15 minutes of this meeting we are going to move to committee business. We're going to address the scheduling, the balance of the study and some other appearances. We can deal with that at the end and focus now on the witnesses we have today, which is a total of five groups.

We have ERS Fuels, GreenNano Technologies, Vision Biomasse, a representative from the Department of Natural Resources, and Coopérative Forestière de Petit Paris.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today. The process, so all of you know, is you will be given up to five minutes for each group to make a presentation. After all the groups have done their presentation we will open the floor to questions from members of the committee. You are welcome to speak in English or French or both. Interpretation services are available. You should have them on your end and we have them on ours.

Thank you very much for joining us today. I am going to start with ERS. I don't know if that's Mr. Small or Mr. Kazemeini. I'll leave it to you. You have five minutes.

[John Small, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, ERS Fuels Inc.]

Good morning, Mr. Chair. I am extremely pleased to appear before you and your colleagues at this virtual sitting of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

I will start with some background on my business partner, now deceased, and me. Doug was the founder of Bird Tool in the U.K. He was frequently presented honours for having the first lights-out facility in automotive tier one, was the centrefold of the industry publication, and was visited by the founder of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Corporation, Mr. Toyoda. His firm was purchased by my employer.

Doug and I worked to relocate a large contract from Japan to Canada, because Canada had higher-quality supplier ratings for the dynamic sealing systems. My employer, Standard Products, was the largest for this product worldwide. I was engineering lead for the group to accomplish this task on behalf of Ford in St. Thomas.

Prior to holding positions from technical management up to director over 30 years in automotive tier one, I spent six years in Florida as engineering manager of an ophthalmic lens manufacturer, where I developed the patented system to injection-mould ophthalmic lenses with the prescription already in the lens. I was asked to be the keynote speaker for the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering that year in California.

Later, when I returned to Canada, my team invented the single piece fastener injected bow seal for Pininfarina, an Italian coach-maker for Ferrari, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. We located manufacturing in Stratford, Ontario.

About five years ago, we wanted to make a difference and help the planet. We decided that if we could design a solid, renewable, odourless, smokeless, biomass-based fuel as a direct replacement for coal, we could have a huge impact. ERS Fuels was born after meeting our eventual president and financier, Mr. Sam Kazemeini. He is a serial entrepreneur with a real soft spot for initiatives that help our environment. We created a team and located our worldwide development centre near Stratford, Ontario.

All biomass-based competing products share a number of common flaws, which over two years we were able to formulate our way clear of. Chief among them is that they produce only 5,000 to 7,000 BTUs, while coal is around 12,000 BTUs. We identified an unwanted part of every landfill in the world that would be chemically correct to use as a binder. Then, over another year, we did a series of tests to manufacture the fuel. The result is a fuel that produces 12,000 BTUs, has little or no emissions, with 99.995% combustion efficiency, and the 0.05% ash can be added immediately to agriculture on the soil.

We partnered with ICFAR, the Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources attached to Ontario's Western University, chaired by Dr. Berruti, who was very helpful and became quite enamoured of our work. ERS Fuels has developed a patented process and is able to recombine the biomass and binder into a new material—patented—that has a density of one. It takes the oxygen from the binder and adds it to the oxygen in the biomass, resulting in our fuel having twice as much oxygen as in the air we breathe. ERS Fuels self-supports combustion, producing a clean blue flame. We continue to test different biomass from around the world, and validate testing through an independent lab in Toronto.

The path was tortuous and expensive. Our first fuel puck was three minutes' manufacturing time; now, four equipment iterations later, it is three seconds through automotive-based continuous improvement techniques.

As time progressed, we realized the government was espousing green strategies where we could align with them and make it happen in Canada. Of particular interest were off-grid northern and indigenous communities where the government flies in diesel to keep them running—and polluting. Our sales director and I were guests at an indigenous convention in Calgary—James Cree First Nation—attended by their assembly, and had a booth on the main floor, which was heavily trafficked by many band leaders.

The response was overwhelmingly positive and we set out to develop purpose-built equipment that would replace diesel, provide electricity, heat greenhouses and municipal buildings, and produce solid fuel for off-reserve properties while providing employment for its members.

We will establish seats at local colleges to train members of these indigenous communities in forestry management and small utility operations.

We have the technology, the team and the vision. We are only missing the support from our federal government at this time.

We need the government to act on their environmental goals, support Canadian innovation in that regard and help us facilitate this move to a cleaner, more sustainable future for our country.

Thank you for hearing these comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Small.

We'll move over to Dr. Sain.

You have five minutes, sir.

[Dr. Mohini Mohan Sain, Chief Consultant, GreenNano Technologies Inc.]

Chairman Maloney, I am very pleased to appear before you and your committee today.

In my capacity as chief consultant for GreenNano Technologies, I will give a brief description of the company, its products, outlets and history.

GreenNano Technologies was established in 2015 as a start-up company associated with the University of Toronto and GreenNano management to commercialize the invention of nanocellulose technology and carbon technology developed by inventors at the University of Toronto.

Since 2015, GreenNano Technologies has developed two facilities: one in Toronto close to downtown, and another in Windsor. The Windsor facility has actually been developed in collaboration with Ford Canada to foster innovations in lightweight manufacturing using light, nanofibre-based composite products.

In downtown Toronto, the facility is involved in nanofibre production, nanofibre-based products and device manufacturing, and also sales and marketing initiatives there [Inaudible—Editor] automotive and disposable smart packaging.

To give a little bit of my history, as a consultant I have affiliations at the University of Toronto as a professor and as former dean of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto as well. Being globally involved since 1993 to commercialize research innovation, the forest products for value-added applications.... I was one of the founders of the world WPC forum: the wood fibre plastic composite forum in 1989 at the University of Toronto.

Since then, in 1993, we launched our first company in Toronto, followed by several companies in the United States. The WPC industry today, globally, is worth about $8 million. We did have in Canada about 21 companies at one stage. That was the peak of the business in Canada, which was about 2005. In 2008, we lost practically all of them, except for two that still exist in the Toronto area.

Beyond these, the business has gone to being mostly centred in the Asia-Pacific and China. Last year, China had a market of over $6 billion itself. This shows the potential of the forest product industry for value-added applications.

Since that time, our university has ventured into another company, which has been developed in co-operation with Magna and Ford Motor Company, with the involvement of a few other OEMs from Ontario, to develop lightweight composite materials for the automotive industry.

In 2009, we demonstrated that microfibre based on wood pulp could be used and perform as a structural material. The first time, globally, was as a structural door model in the Nissan Sentra GXE. Unfortunately, after 2008, because of the fibreglass market pricing from China, the market at that point in time could not compete price-wise; therefore, we had to move to some more value-added applications at that point.

As a result, in 2015, GreenNano Technologies was created. Since then, it has been working toward value-added applications in two sectors, primarily. One is the automotive sector, where we are looking mostly at very high-value applications in EV powertrain development, where the powertrain components contain a battery, battery casing and battery packs with about 40% more lightweight material reducing the metal materials that are being used right now.

An interesting invention happened during this time. At the same time GNT was able to use nanocellulose in a very small quantity, to the level of about 5%, in combination with forest-based advanced carbon, nanostructured carbon materials, which were actually categorically combustion residues of the forest floor, which gave nanostructured graphene-like carbon materials, were being introduced in these automotive structural components for the EV powertrain applications.

That actually helped these nanofibres, the cellulose nanofibres, to overcome one of the largest demerits of cellulose fibres, i.e., poor resistance to high-thermal barrier properties.

As a result of these hybrid combinations, at GreenNano Technologies we were able to have a product that can withstand as high as 170°C on a continuous basis. This is one of the achievements that was patented by them and then commercialized.

Since COVID came, GNT has also been involved in the health care sector. Very recently they developed a new product for renewable masks. This was done in combination with the University of Toronto's copper-coating technology. They have developed copper-coated renewable fibre technology, which is used as a filter for disposable masks.

They also have products that have gone—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Dr. Sain, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up quickly, sir.

[Dr. Mohini Mohan Sain]

Yes. It will be 30 seconds.

On disposable packaging, not only are they now marketing hand disinfection agents, but they are also marketing coffee lids and other packaging materials, where they are looking at the needs for the high temperature resistance.

On that note, I want to thank the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

I jumped the gun on interrupting you. I appreciate you wrapping up.

Mr. Arsenault, I believe you're next. I heard you say you're in Sherbrooke. I used to live in Lennoxville, so I hope things are well in that neck of the woods.

[John Arsenault, Co-spokesperson, Vision Biomasse Québec]

Yes, they are.

I see that Madam Rancourt has joined the committee.

She will be giving the presentation.

I can answer any questions later.

[Emmanuelle Rancourt, Coordinator and Co-spokesperson, Vision Biomasse Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for inviting us to appear today and for studying an issue as important as the economic recovery in the forestry sector.

You already met Mr. Arsenault, who is joining me today. He is a co-spokesperson of Vision Biomasse Québec.

Vision Biomasse Québec brings together some 20 organizations from the co-operative, municipal, environmental and sustainable development, and business communities. They have all chosen to join forces in pursuit of a common goal: promoting a robust industry that uses forest biomass to provide heating in Quebec.

We help build and share expertise regarding the use of forest biomass for heating through communication and education. We are working to help shape the industry through our political outreach efforts.

Some time ago, these organizations worked together to develop a promising vision for the industry, one that could be leveraged to support the country's economic recovery. They identified the potential to convert the heating systems of buildings outside major urban centres across Quebec and unlock the following benefits: replace 400 million litres of fossil fuel annually, make use of 1 million metric tons of residual forest biomass annually, prevent 1 million metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually, produce 4,000 gigawatt-hours in renewable energy, improve Quebec's trade balance by $225 million, and create 12,500 construction jobs and 3,600 permanent jobs.

Those benefits could certainly be enhanced if the vision were implemented Canada-wide. The impact of converting emitters such as cement and steel plants would be greater still.

As far as the economic recovery in the forestry sector is concerned, Vision Biomasse Québec believes strongly that forest biomass is part of the solution. After all, forest biomass is a wood product derived from forest residue, previously considered as waste with no value. The forest biomass industry can also help strengthen the forest industry by creating permanent jobs that remain in the regions thanks to the supply chain, from harvesting and transportation to processing.

The benefits are not limited to the forestry sector given that the use of forest biomass helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy self-sufficiency and lower building heating costs. By leveraging a local and renewable energy source available just about Canada-wide—particularly in Quebec—the forest biomass industry is contributing to GDP, as well as provincial and federal government revenues. It can also have a very positive impact on provincial trade balances because money spent to generate this type of energy stays in the province, instead of being spent outside the province to procure fossil fuel supply.

However, the industry has not yet reached full capacity, with the bulk of the market outside Canada. Developing the domestic market is therefore paramount: millions of tonnes of forest biomass could be sold domestically to create renewable energy and support the country's energy transition.

Remote communities hold significant potential for building the industry's domestic market. The fact is that many communities in northern Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba, as well as in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, have already converted and are using local forest biomass for their heating needs. Government support programs are nevertheless vital to the success of these projects, which will raise the industry's profile and contribute to its strong development.

Existing federal programs to support this type of conversion should be maintained and even expanded to accelerate conversion and promote economic recovery.

What's more, Environment and Climate Change Canada is developing a regulatory framework for clean fuels. The department will be releasing standards for liquid fossil fuels soon, with regulations for gaseous and solid fuels to follow. Under the framework, a credit trading system will be established to replace liquid fuels with low-carbon-intensity liquid or gaseous fuels.

It would most likely be a biomass-based product, but with significant losses in performance as a result of conversion. Since the current use of solid biomass-based fuel often serves as an alternative to a liquid fuel such as oil or a gas fuel such as propane, without any major loss in thermal efficiency, we believe these types of fuel alternatives should also be considered for credit eligibility. That would support the market's development in Canada, while reducing greenhouse gases.

The current framework provides for the creation of credits for renewable natural gas production as an alternative to liquid petroleum-based products, despite the loss in thermal efficiency. Credits cannot be created, however, for the use of solid biomass as an alternative to oil. To promote the biomass industry, as well as Canada's forest industry, the Standing Committee on Natural Resources should recommend that the proposed regulations on liquid fuel standards allow for the creation of credits for biomass-based fuels as an alternative to any fossil fuel. The future regulations on solid fuels should do the same.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My colleague and I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that you were right on time.

Next we have Mr. Kurz.

[Dr. Werner Kurz, Senior Research Scientist, Canadian Forest Service, Department of Natural Resources]

Good morning, Chair, and good morning committee. I thank you for the opportunity to be appearing as a witness.

My name is Werner Kurz. I'm a senior research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria. I lead the team that conducts the greenhouse gas inventories and projections for Canada's forest sector.

Today I want to speak to you about the question of whether the Canadian forest sector recovery and climate change mitigation objectives can be aligned. I have distributed my presentation to the committee.

Keeping global mean temperature increases to below 2°C requires net negative emissions in this century. These negative emissions can only be achieved by simultaneously reducing fossil fuel emissions and increasing forest carbon sinks.

Globally at present, forests remove about 30% of human-caused emissions. It is therefore important that when we calculate and estimate mitigation, these must be incremental activities to the existing sinks. Unfortunately, as we witnessed around the world recently, forest sinks are also at risk from climate change, causing large and rapid releases from wildfires. Therefore, developing climate-effective mitigation strategies requires the scientific assessment of the available options.

Turning to slide 3, we are fortunate that we have in Canada a forest carbon monitoring, accounting and reporting system and a series of models. We started developing this carbon budget model in 1989, and the third version of it is now used around the world for similar types of analyses. We use these tools to report on past carbon dynamics as legislated for the state of forest reporting and for international reporting. We also project future carbon dynamics, develop climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, and lay the scientific foundation for various forest carbon initiatives.

On slide 4 I show you a picture of a million cubic metres of wood. This is containing the amount equivalent to about one million tonnes of CO2. In British Columbia we harvest about 67 times this amount. There's about the same amount of CO2 contained in this wood as the emissions from all other sectors in British Columbia. How we use this wood therefore matters greatly.

Turning to slide 5, what we have learned in our analyses over the recent years is that there are two indicators that we must pay close attention to. These are the carbon retention time, in other words, the amount of time for which the harvest of carbon is retained in the product, and the displacement factor or substitution benefits, in other words, the amount of avoided emissions that we achieve through using a wood product.

Bioenergy has a wide range of displacement factors. The highest are achieved if we replace diesel fuel generators in northern communities, but all bioenergy uses have a very short carbon retention time, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere that was removed by tree growth.

What we have consistently demonstrated in Canada and around the world is that the highest mitigation benefits are achieved if wood is used in long-lived structural building products, which often retain the carbon for decades or centuries.

On the next slide I show you examples of buildings that are constructed in Canada. These are not only high-rises like the 18-storey Brock Commons building on the campus of the University of British Columbia, but also bridges and other infrastructure like hockey rinks and museums.

How we use the harvested wood matters. I'll give you a numerical example, conducted by my Ph.D. student, Sheng Xie. If we hypothetically were to replace all harvested wood in British Columbia and use it to produce liquid transportation fuels, we could just meet B.C.'s annual demand of about nine billion litres per year.

If, on the other hand, we would, again hypothetically, use all the wood harvested in British Columbia to produce mass timber buildings, we could build around 10,000 of these 18-storey Brock Commons buildings per year.

The big difference is that if we used the wood for mass timber, the cumulative emissions by 2050 would be nearly two billion tonnes of CO2 lower with the mass timber approach, because carbon is retained in the wood and emissions from other products are reduced. The same is, of course, also true for fossil fuel emissions, but we release all the carbon from the harvested wood back into the atmosphere.

Of course, not all harvested wood can end up in mass timber and B.C. does not build 10,000 Brock Commons buildings per year, but this is to demonstrate that how we use the wood matters.

There is this problem of climate change and the impacts of wildfires on carbon retention. In British Columbia, the 2017 and 2018 wildfires have caused 200 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.

That is about three times the emissions from all other sectors in British Columbia combined per year. We have, therefore, recently started a new research project funded by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions in which we address the question of how we can reduce future wildfire emissions and strengthen B.C.'s forest-based bioeconomy at the same time, for example, by using wood residues from fuel treatments in various applications.

In conclusion, keeping temperature increases to below 2°C requires net negative emissions before 2100, and while this may seem far away, this is within the lifetime of children born today. This requires drastic reductions of emissions in all sectors, but it is not achievable without also greatly increasing future forest carbon sinks. These are unfortunately also at risk from climate change, and we need to take the interaction between forest management decisions and fire risk into consideration.

Climate effective mitigation strategies in the forest sector exist and must be based on sound scientific assessments of their greenhouse gas impacts. Canada's forest sector recovery can be aligned with climate mitigation objectives to improve forest management and in particular the increased use of long-lived wood products.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kurz.

Last but not least, we'll go to Mr. Paradis.

[Alain Paradis, General Manager, Coopérative forestière de Petit Paris]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity.

Allow me to begin by telling you a bit about who we are. The Coopérative forestière de Petit Paris is a 50-year-old organization based, of course, in Quebec, not in Paris. We are located in Saint-Ludger-de-Milot, in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, in the heart of the beautiful Lac-Saint-Jean area. We are a co-operative of forestry workers and all of those workers own the business. As a small and medium-sized enterprise, or SME, we are not a multinational, so the forestry sector is very important to a company like ours. It is also important to the residents of our beautiful area.

Some 300 workers are involved in the co-operative, in every area of forestry operations. We own a sawmill, a SME and one of the largest independent sawmills in Quebec. It processes softwood lumber.

I would like to address two things in particular, the current context and the importance of the recovery in the forestry sector.

First, because of the current situation, the industry is having a tough time. I would even go so far as to say that, on some levels, the situation will turn precarious if the industry's future is not properly addressed. Second, keep in mind that the recovery in the forestry sector is fundamental to the fight against climate change and regional development.

Currently, the industry is dependent on a very volatile market—the lumber market. The past two or three years have been quite devastating for businesses. Those that did not modernize before the industry began experiencing these low periods a few years ago are obviously struggling to survive these difficult times.

The pandemic gave us a slight boost, which led to an increase in lumber prices—one that is temporary. We have no idea what is around the corner. Since our market covers the American northeast, we are heavily dependent on what happens in the U.S. In the past few months, we have been able to take a breath, but we are very concerned about the future and the impact on the markets.

Furthermore, the fundamental importance of the recovery in the forestry sector cannot be overlooked when it comes to climate change and regional development. There is an imbalance as far as sustainable development is concerned. As you know, the industry is under tremendous pressure from an environmental standpoint.

Keeping that environmental balance is crucial. There is significant pressure in Quebec to increase protected spaces in various ways. Clearly, we want to achieve the government's objectives, but we face all sorts of pressure with respect to woodland caribou and endangered species, for example. The result is less forest development. Over the past decade, the volume of timber harvested has dropped by at least 10 million cubic metres annually.

I also want to point out that the regulatory regime is not necessarily geared towards the industry's needs. Quebec's forestry regime is highly restrictive, so we can't be nearly as nimble in controlling our prices. Earlier, when I talked about markets, I was to some extent talking about revenue. We have to be able to ensure high productivity while keeping operating costs under control. The current regulatory regime poses significant challenges. We have even called on the government to review the regime because it falls well short of our needs.

Lastly, proper financial support is necessary. That means robust programs to support the industry. I will give you an example. In an effort to promote sector-based development, the federal government introduced a program where 80% of the funding was allocated to British Columbia, when in Quebec, 30% of jobs are related to the forestry sector.

The sector must receive fair treatment. We really need the government's support if we are to play an effective role in the industry.

I mentioned the current context. As we look towards the future, it will be necessary to rethink certain strategies to ensure the forestry sector's survival. That brings me to two important points: one, mitigating climate change and, two, supporting regional adaptation.

The forestry sector is an indispensable partner in the fight against climate change.

First, carbon sequestration is an important consideration. Cutting mature trees, which no longer sequester carbon, and replacing them with young trees supports the capture of carbon.

Second, promoting the use of wood in all buildings and consumer products is an important avenue. By making greater use of this renewable feedstock, which has minimal environmental impact, we can achieve carbon neutrality.

Third, encouraging innovation is essential, particularly when it comes to materials such as lumber. Such an initiative would help the industry become more productive and competitive while providing added value through new products and new markets.

Fourth and finally, establishing tailored regulations and ensuring true sustainable development are of the utmost importance. Balancing economic, social and environmental interests is key. Although we are working hard to maintain that balance, environmental interests are currently superseding economic considerations.

With respect to regional adaptation, the sector's recovery will play a central role in regional development. Nearly 250 municipalities depend on Quebec's forestry sector. If we don't endeavour to preserve that, we will not be able to attract and retain workers. The regions are facing a labour shortage, one that will continue unless they can turn things around. If not, everyone will move to the major urban centres, and I'm not sure how that will do anything for regional development.

I must stress what an asset our industry is to the fight against climate change, so the government should do what is necessary to strengthen and empower the industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Paradis, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up very quickly, please.

[Alain Paradis]

Very well.

I will conclude by saying that the forestry sector has had a hand in the regional development of each and every one of Quebec's beautiful regions through hydroelectricity. It is therefore imperative that the government continue to support regional development.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, sir, and my apologies for the interruption, but we have to move on.

Mr. Zimmer, I believe you're starting us off this morning.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Yes, good day, everybody.

I'd like to follow up with the notice of motion that was brought forward last week. I'd like to move the motion, which is:

That, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, be invited to appear before the committee as part of its ongoing study on Economic Recovery in the Forestry Sector, prior to December 11, 2020, to provide critical information relating to the recent WTO ruling, as the Government Official who appeared on October 30, 2020 was not able to respond to the question and suggested that Global Affairs Canada appear and answer that question at a future meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. Zimmer.

I know we have people who want to speak to this. Would you consider deferring this until the end of the meeting when we're in committee business?

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I'd like to get it over with now in public, if that's possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Okay.

Mr. Sidhu, you're up next, then.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to my colleague for bringing this to our attention.

I think, as I said last time, it's important that we also hear from GAC officials about the technical aspect. I would rather do this near the end of our meeting because our witnesses are here and I don't want to take up more of their precious time. I really want to ask them questions that relate to our study. That's my suggestion here.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Yes, as we said before, the GAC officials are more than welcome to appear with the minister, so it shouldn't be an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Lefebvre has his hand up.

If you want to raise your hand, I would ask people to use the “raise hand” column on the side.

Mr. Lefebvre, you're next.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're pretty much on the same page. We all want the minister to appear; there's no doubt about that, and we certainly want to hear from officials as well.

We have four meetings in front of us, one of which I believe we're going to try to get Mr. O'Regan to appear at as well. That's two meetings , which leaves us two more meetings. Again, Mr. Zimmer has a lot of experience in this, but we can request if and when she is available in the four time slots we have, and we can take it from there. I'm not opposed at all to the request. The best we can do is ask, and if she can't make it in the next four meetings, then certainly in the new year.

I don't think it's a question of if she will appear. It's a question of when she will appear. On that basis, I don't know if Mr. Zimmer wants to move on that but then we could get going with the witnesses.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Yes. My apologies for taking so long.

I think it's relevant to the forest recovery, which is the exact topic that's before the committee.

I think the WTO ruling could be argued and is the biggest issue affecting our forest sector, especially in British Columbia, but across the country. I would argue that it's right at the top and I think it validates the reason the minister needs to be here.