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.