Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2024

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

There we go.

My point is that having the labour minister come and talk about the impact on jobs that the emissions cap would have.... There are multiple reports out there talking about how devastating it will be to employment in the country, which shows that it would be absolutely important to have the labour minister come and talk about it.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We have Ms. Dabrusin's amendment on the deletion. I don't see any other speakers looking to speak, so we will proceed to a vote.

Is it clear for everyone what we're voting on? It's deleting the line, “The Minister of Labour and Seniors”.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

That carries unanimously.

I will go to you, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to bring up the committee business that has been an open file and unfinished business.

We remember that we had asked Mr. Jackson Wijaya to come and testify about his takeover of multiple Canadian mills, and he refused to testify, which I find very concerning.

Just this past month we learned, through the European anti-monopoly regulators, that Mr. Wijaya's group, Paper Excellence, admitted that they are the Asia Pulp & Paper company. They admitted that to European regulators, but they told the Canadian government that there was absolutely no connection whatsoever between this new entity that they created, Paper Excellence—which took control of Domtar, Northern Pulp, Resolute and other mills—and Asia Pulp & Paper, and we now know that was false. I think it's incumbent upon our committee to send another invitation for Mr. Wijaya to come and testify—including a subpoena if necessary—and that we bring forward officials who had investigated and assured us about Asia Pulp & Paper not being connected with Paper Excellence.

Why is this important? Well, Asia Pulp & Paper has a notorious environmental track record. I don't think anyone would have opened the door to Asia Pulp & Paper or the Wijaya family coming in to take over Canadian forestry operations if it were known that they are Asia Pulp & Paper—hence the creation of Paper Excellence as the Trojan Horse to get into Canada. What's concerning is that the track record and the paper trail of the connection of Asia Pulp & Paper to the Wijayas was so clear from the beginning. We need to know how they were able to hoodwink Canadian officials and get control of our mills.

I'm not going to go into this for too long.

What do we know? At the height of it is a group called Sinar Mas, which is controlled entirely by the Wijaya family. Asia Pulp & Paper was founded by Eka Wijaya, under Sinar Mas. This Asia Pulp & Paper China company is situated in the White Magnolia Plaza in Shanghai, in a building known as the Sinar Mas plaza. We know that Jackson Wijaya, one of the key members of the Wijaya clan, established their Canadian presence through Paper Excellence, and that when they were being set up, they received a bank loan at an extremely low rate of 0.1% from a Chinese bank controlled by the Wijaya family. From the beginning, this should have set off alarm bells about financing from Chinese authorities for Canadian natural resources, but there are many other serious concerns being raised.

Mac Anderson from MacKenzie Fibre testified to a B.C. legislative committee that “Paper Excellence is owned by a company called Sinar Mas.” He then said further that “Guys at Shanghai were reviewing what I was doing.” How is it possible that Paper Excellence—now they're calling themselves Domtar again—can claim to be a Canadian company if we have employees who said that they were being directed by Shanghai operations over Canadian pulp and paper operations?

According to media reports, there was a former manager at the APP Shanghai office who described the expansion into Canada as a “fibre grab”. He said, “They want to keep the perception that Paper Excellence is an asset for Canada of Canada for Canada and by Canada, but in reality, it's a feeder for the Chinese machine.” We need to know whether our mills, some of which have been shut down, and some of which have faced environmental penalties since they were taken over by Paper Excellence, are being managed for the good and the interests of Canadian operations or as feeders for the Chinese machine?

The Halifax Examiner also raised serious questions that decisions were not being made at the Paper Excellence headquarters in Richmond, British Columbia, but at the APP offices in Shanghai. At that point there was a direct link that APP was controlling our mills, yet we had Minister Champagne and his staff tell us that they couldn't find any connection whatsoever. This is either the ultimate example of Canadian officials being hoodwinked or not wanting to know the connection, but we need to know that connection because Sinar Mas and Asia Pulp & Paper have a long list of allegations of environment damage.

There have been massive international campaigns against APP because of the massive burnings in Indonesia and destruction of their peat ecosystems and the loss of their FSC forestry certification licences under APP.

We don't need that kind of negative corporate track record when it comes to Canada's mills. We want to have the highest standards and we want to know that the people who are running our mills are willing to maintain that highest standard.

I have brought forward a motion that I'd like to read into the record:

That, in light of recent reports that Jackson Wijaya and Paper Excellence are about to take control of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), and given that Paper Excellence and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry assured this committee there is no connection between Paper Excellence and Asia Pulp & Paper; at the discretion of the chair, and within 10 days of the passage of this motion, the committee call Jackson Wijaya; the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry; and representatives from the International Forest Stewardship Council to testify in regard to the impact of such a takeover and whether the control of 22 million hectares of Canadian forests and multiple dependent mill towns by Asia Pulp and Paper represents a “net benefit” to Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

I'll now go to Ms. Dabrusin.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

I actually think it's a good idea to have Mr. Wijaya come to speak, so I am happy to do that. However, I was going to propose an amendment to replace “within 10 days of the passage of this motion” with “as soon as possible”.

The only reason I am suggesting that is that I wouldn't want Mr. Wijaya to be able to say, “Oh, I wasn't able to come within 10 days” and then have the wiggle room not to appear. “Within 10 days of the passage of this motion” would be great, but I think that it would be better if we leave it to “as soon as possible” so that we don't give that kind of wiggle room.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Okay.

Mr. Angus, go ahead.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I appreciate that, and I'm certainly open to that discussion.

However, I'm wondering if the interpretation could be that within 10 days we're asking you, Chair, to issue this call to him. We're not expecting that he's going to show up here by December 22 but that you will initiate this process immediately to start calling him. You would then come back and tell us when he is available.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Okay.

Go ahead, Ms. Dabrusin.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Do we need to change anything in the wording of the motion? I agree with what Mr. Angus has just proposed. Does something need to be changed to the wording in terms of my amendment?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

That's how we interpreted it, so I would turn it over to the clerk to see if the way we wrote it wasn't clear enough.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We'll just take a moment for the clerk to review. I'll actually just suspend for a moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We do have a motion on the floor with an amendment.

I'm going to go back to you, Ms. Dabrusin, on the amendment.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I think I have had the clarification that I need, and hearing the way Mr. Angus described it, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Very good.

Colleagues, we have a motion on the floor brought forward by Mr. Angus.

I'm going to look across the room. I don't see any further hands up, which means that we will proceed—

Go ahead, Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I won't take a lot of your time, but in reading the motion, I don't see a date that's been specified as to when we would like to see these representatives.

Is that intentional, Charlie, or did you have something in mind—through you, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Falk.

I will go to Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Well, thank you.

What was intentional was that the chair will reach out to Mr. Wijaya.

We have gone through this before. The process is that you ask them politely. Mr. Wijaya said that he was too busy to talk to Canadian parliamentarians about his Canadian operations. We were going to follow up with a summons, but then we got caught up with other business.

I think the chair and the clerk should come back to us and say whether they are willing to meet and how soon they can meet. If we then have questions about them delaying that, there are further steps we can take, but the first step is for the chair to reach out.

Of course, I invite Mr. Champagne any day of the week. I'd like to see him here, but I trust the chair on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

Let's proceed to a vote.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

I will now go to Ms. Dabrusin.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I believe that we saved the time for the second half of this meeting to do some report studying, so I move to another order of business so that we may move in camera.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

I don't see any objections to that, so we have consent to do so.

We will now move into camera, and we will suspend for the transition. It may take about 10 minutes.

We're suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]