Evidence of meeting #14 for Natural Resources in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
That is your time. Thank you both.
We go now to another British Columbian, Mr. McKinnon.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
As I mentioned before the meeting, at one point in my life, I spent quite a lot of time in Campbell River. It's a very nice town.
Welcome to Mr. Gunn, who's joining us in this committee.
You mentioned the closure of the pulp mill at Elk Falls. You say the main reason for that was a lack of feedstock or of product for it. I'm wondering if there are any other factors there.
It used to be a major employer in the community. How has the community responded and adapted since its closure?
Mayor, City of Campbell River
Like I said, the pulp and paper market is really tight. It was tight 15 years ago.
Not long before we lost our sawmill.... I'm a Rotarian. We had a presentation by Catalyst. The president of Catalyst said that, nationally, we needed to lose about one paper machine a year just because of the way markets were going and the lack of a need for paper as we go to a more electronic way of communicating, losing newspapers and that kind of thing. Not long after that, we lost our sawmill. There needed to be a pulp mill that was lost and ours just lost the mill that was feeding it, which made it convenient for the market to shut that mill down.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
How has your community adapted to that? Does it rely more heavily on forestry in general or some other...?
Fishing has kind of waned over the recent decades, so I should think forestry is still a major employer.
Mayor, City of Campbell River
Forestry is still a major employer, but a lot of the people who lost their jobs in the sawmill and pulp mill moved on to Fort McMurray and oil field work, remotely—away from Campbell River. We see a lot of people at the airport there, commuting back and forth. They're working 14 and seven, if they're lucky.
It took a lot of people out of our community. I flew out sitting next to a guy whose family had lived in Campbell River for a really long time. He moved to Fort McMurray 15 years ago.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
I note that back in June, you beseeched resource-dependent communities to join a collective advocacy movement.
Have you had any uptake on that? How has that been proceeding?
Mayor, City of Campbell River
The uptake has been incredible. We started out doing Zoom and Teams meetings from our offices in Campbell River to other communities. Then, in September, we held a networking event at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, where we had hoped that 50 to 60 people would show up. We had over 200 people attend. We've continued to have a great positive response.
We're trying to get the message across to more metropolitan areas, to show them how connected...and why what we do in the urban and rural areas is so important to them. For example, with aquaculture, the food is produced in the Lower Mainland. If aquaculture gets shut down, they lose lots of jobs in that area. It's the same with a lot of the wood that gets cut in many areas. It gets towed down the Fraser and gets dealt with in mills in those areas. The Georgia strait is where the head offices for Western Forest Products and Interfor are. What happens in our remote, resource-based communities is super important to the city dwellers. We've tried, through the alliance, to get that across to many mayors and councillors.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
I also have a letter from you to Premier Eby, beseeching him to take more action on the regulatory slowdowns and so forth. What sorts of places does this kind of advocacy intend to focus on to drive change? I note, of course, that forestry regulation is provincial. I'm just wondering how we as a federal government could help.
Mayor, City of Campbell River
I think the most important thing that you, as the federal government, can do to help would be to get a softwood lumber deal. That would be number one.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
That's something we've been working on for about 30 years. If you have any brainwaves there to help us, that would be helpful too.
Mayor, City of Campbell River
The second thing you could do would be to get the softwood lumber support package out the door now to the companies, workers and contractors that are in desperate need.
Third, fund first nations tenure purchases and capacity training to speed up the tenure transition. We've seen locally, in our area, with the success of the We Wai Kai Nation, that nations are showing success as tenure holders. It's a strong step towards reconciliation, and first nations have shown that they want to control timber harvesting in their areas.
The fourth thing you could do would be to help diversify our markets for export. The U.S. market is of course important, but to become more stable, we must not be dependent on the U.S.
India has a population of 1.44 billion people. They are seeing massive urbanization, with millions of new housing units under construction. South Korea is smaller but experiencing a massive growth in mid-rise, four- and five-storey construction. We need to stabilize our relationships with Vietnam, the Philippines and China. China has a population of 1.41 billion. They all have a building boom of some type that wood construction would be good for.
Liberal
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Dahl, thank you for being with us. I'm from Quebec, specifically Saguenay—Lac‑Saint‑Jean, one of the most active forestry regions in Quebec. I completely understand what it's like for you.
In response to my fellow member Mr. McKinnon's question, you talked about the drawn-out dispute with the United States. It's clear that, without a resolution, things won't get better for the forestry sector.
I read in the news that the minister, Dominic LeBlanc, was in British Columbia for a forestry summit on November 3.
A proposal has been going around for a while now. It was raised publicly and has been discussed during the committee's proceedings. I wanted to know what you thought.
Right now, $11 billion in countervailing and anti-dumping duties is being held by the U.S. Clearly, 80% of $11 billion is a big chunk of money for the government to fork out to forestry producers so they can keep their operations going. It was something a number of people had initially asked for. However, realizing how much money was at stake, people came up with a compromise, which is that the federal government buy back 50% of countervailing and anti-dumping duties from producers at the end of every month. That way, producers could maintain their facilities. I'm not sure whether the proposal made its way around your neck of the woods, but I'd like to know whether you think it could help. Would it be an acceptable solution while we wait for the dispute to be settled?
Like me, you probably saw government communications indicating that the government's negotiating priorities vis-à-vis the U.S. are steel, energy and aluminum. Softwood lumber isn't one of them, so we have to find a way to keep people in the sector employed, to keep producers in business.
Does a 50% buyback at the end of every month seem like a viable solution to you?
Mayor, City of Campbell River
I'm really not familiar with any of what happened during the meeting on November 3. It was held in Vancouver. There hasn't been a lot of coverage on the west coast, other than what the forestry minister has had to say, which is that the federal government is going to allocate funds towards a transition for forestry in B.C. I'm sorry, but I'm just not familiar with that.
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you. The clerk can send you the proposal in writing, so perhaps you could get back to us with a written answer.
Mr. Jeffery, I have the same question for you. While we wait for a resolution, do you think reimbursing producers 50% of the duties retrospectively would be a good way to support the people in the forestry sector?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
Yes, Mr. Simard, you make a very good point, which is that there is $11 billion that has been collected at the border from this industry. That has impaired this industry's ability to reinvest in itself, a reinvestment that we need to do to meet the challenges I was outlining earlier.
Measures that can try to repatriate that money certainly would be useful for the industry. I'm not sure of the technicalities of the buyback and how that would work, or whether that would create additional claims by the coalition of subsidies to the industry, but the fact remains that without that $11 billion we've been impaired badly in our ability to reinvest in our people, our communities and our facilities.
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you, Mr. Jeffery.
In your opening statement, you stressed the importance of using wood products and promoting wood-based building. I've been an MP since 2019. Over the years, I have repeatedly pushed for legislation or a government policy that would require the federal government to take into account the carbon footprint of a proposal in the tendering of contracts. When you take a project's carbon footprint into account, wood tends to be the material that scores better than others. Unfortunately, though, such a measure has never come to fruition.
In the last Parliament, the NDP introduced a bill on the use of wood. Although the government agreed to it, the bill isn't binding. Essentially, what it says is that wood is a material that can be used, but I don't think the use of wood was prohibited previously. Let's just say the bill lacks teeth.
Would you welcome legislation or regulations requiring the government to take a project's carbon footprint into account when putting contracts out to tender or making the use of wood mandatory in such contracts?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
Yes, Mr. Simard, absolutely. There are a couple of ways that we're working on this right now. First of all is the whole building life-cycle assessment or analysis. That should be a requirement for any federal procurement. You also have the buy Canadian policy, a procurement policy that's under development. That should say we should be buying Canadian products and that we should be looking at the carbon footprint of those products.
Combining that whole building life-cycle assessment with the procurement piece would go a long way towards helping us ensure that we're decarbonizing the built environment. That would be favourable or helpful for wood and wood hybrid systems.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you.
We're on to our second round now, colleagues. We're going to start with Mr. Tochor, with Mr. Hogan on deck.
Mr. Tochor, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today.
Mr. Jeffery, you talked in your opening remarks about de-risking and needing support for de-risking. What are the associated risks?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
I was talking about de-risking the move to modern methods of construction. One of the issues that we face today is that the current procurement and contracting policies don't accommodate the fact that if we go to modern methods of construction, which are built in factories, you can get paid. Generally, the way that construction financing works is you don't get your money until the building starts coming out of the ground. If you're spending 80% of your time and effort and money building it in the factory and not getting paid for that, that's a big risk.
We can also make sure that there's a pipeline of projects. The federal and provincial governments have non-market housing, social housing, those kinds of things. In order to get people to invest and de-risk investments in those projects and in factory-built housing, we could get a pipeline so that folks know that they have order files. It's a bit of a boom-and-bust business now, and if you can flatten that out, that would be helpful to folks who are building just normal light wood frame.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I get the pipeline comment, and I get the frustrations. The one that comes to mind is B.C. Ferries. The government had control over who would build them, but now it's going to China because the federal government wouldn't underwrite that project. That has to be frustrating for associations like yours.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I want to switch and ask a question on steel studs versus wood studs. Where are the steel studs primarily being made in Canada?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
I have no idea. I can tell you where the wood studs are made.