Thanks, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, and to Lisa and Jeff for enduring all the forestry people today. It's nice to see you both.
Canada's forest products sector is the national voice of the sector. We welcome the discussion. It's a timely one for a few reasons.
One reason is that, as Lisa said as the government prepares to make decisions for federal budget 2023, it's important that we work in partnership to set our sector and its people up for success in the long term.
Second, as we push through these challenging times, we absolutely need greater regulatory and policy certainty. There's a lot and a very heavy agenda at Environment and Climate Change Canada, an agenda whose objectives our sector is very much aligned with, but some of the execution is falling a bit flat for us in some spots. We would really like to see CCC better understand how our sector works. We need it to be more responsive to our concerns in the national and global context. For us, initiatives like the clean fuel regulations and the output-based pricing system, which we support, are creating some problems for us rather than solutions, and are bringing some uncertainty to future investment in Canada.
Third, and importantly, we're seeing a number of things south of the border that must be considered if we're to ensure that forestry workers and broader Canadian manufacturing workers aren't left behind. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act requires a robust response. While there are some positive signals in the fall economic statement around tax credits and the Canada growth fund, many details are still unclear. The competitiveness risk this poses to Canadian industry cannot be understated, and the speed at which the Americans are moving cannot be underestimated.
The U.S. buy clean agenda is another big factor. Just on September 15, the Biden administration made another America first move, prioritizing the purchase of low-carbon construction materials covering 98% of the materials purchased by the U.S. government. This was announced not only to green federal infrastructure in the U.S., but also to boost U.S. manufacturing. We need a strong made-in-Canada, buy clean, build clean plan in response.
While the softwood lumber dispute continues—and Linda spoke a bit to that—our sector is facing additional trade risk with U.S. customers and in some U.S. states based on American-rooted campaigns of misinformation in an effort to restrict forest product exports heading to the U.S..
FPAC's federal budget submission outlines the areas where we believe sustained investment is required. We're focused on supporting winning programs and on programs that accelerate innovation, that strengthen prospects for Canadian workers and that deliver return on investment for the federal government and Canadian taxpayers.
We have seen proven success in core funding programs supporting FPInnovations, which I'm sure Stéphane will talk about; the leading export market development work by Canada Wood; the leading building codes and standards work that's done by our partners at the Canadian Wood Council; and key NRCan dollars that power the indigenous forestry initiative, which I hope Bradley is going to speak to in a bit. The investments in forest industry transformation are also highly regarded programs by our sector and are consistently and massively oversubscribed annually.
There are a couple of areas where we'd like to see a bit of a different work path with the federal government.
One is on accelerating sector decarbonization. NRCan is our home for forest policy and science, but over the past few years, billion of federal dollars that power industrial decarbonization have been more centralized over at ISED. This has put us at a bit of a disadvantage, as we're not among the heaviest emitters. We have already reduced GHG emissions at our mills by nearly 70% since the early 1990s, so it's a case of what got us here is not going to get us there. Over at ISED, we're being overshadowed by other sectors with bigger decarbonization needs, and the prevailing sense across government is that NRCan is our home. Unfortunately, it's a home that doesn't fund the decarbonization support programs we need.
As I discussed with Minister Champagne on Friday and Minister Wilkinson a few weeks ago, we need a clearer decarbonization road map and action plan for forestry with the federal govenment so that our opportunities are not overlooked. We need access to our fair share of federal decarbonization dollars. We are finding ourselves in a situation where we're being left out because we're not big enough emitters.
The second and final point I'll make is on promoting and defending Canadian forestry workers. We've seen an uptick in anti-Canadian forestry activism in the U.S., and it's impacting our relationships with U.S.-based customers. We're also seeing state legislators in California and New York advancing anti-Canadian procurement bills to restrict Canadian forest products from going into those states.
We're grateful for the support of our federal and provincial governments, but we continue to be in reactive mode. We need a proactive team Canada approach to address these issues. For states like New York, which seemed immovable in their efforts, we need the federal government to send a strong signal back that such a move would have consequences to Canada-New York trade.
I'll leave it there. I look forward to responding to any questions.
Again, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the opportunity.