Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Bill Downing. I'm the president of Structurlam Products in Penticton, B.C. I'm going to talk specifically about value-added and a specific product in value-added, and that's mass timber building elements, because that's what my

Natural Resources committee  What happened was when Structurlam took the leap and decided to build a manufacturing plant that was going to produce this new product called CLTs or cross-laminated timber panels, there was no market. We were very fortunate in a couple of ways. First of all, the federal governm

Natural Resources committee  Basically, building in wood is generally carbon neutral to carbon positive. We've done a life cycle analysis on our material, and we have the scientific basis for saying that our material is carbon neutral. That's done through an organization called FPInnovations, a wood research

Natural Resources committee  As I mentioned, Structurlam has been in business for 55 years, and during that time we have exported all around the world. There are two markets that are really key to us. Obviously, the U.S. market is huge, and it's just gaining momentum on building with mass timber. The other m

Natural Resources committee  That's a good question. There is an organization in Canada called the Canadian Wood Council, and a subset of that, the Wood Works initiative is doing a lot of that great work. The research is being done with FPInnovations and various universities across Canada on the fire side,

Natural Resources committee  That's another good question. I'm sorry I missed that, because I live and die in the building code world. We have a system in Canada where you can go for an alternative solution. If the engineer says, “I believe that's going to work and I'm willing to stamp it”, I can go outside

Natural Resources committee  Yes, sure. Was the question specifically wood versus steel or concrete?

Natural Resources committee  I think we need to get recognized. The number one advantage of building out of wood is the speed of installation. There's a huge advantage from the scheduling component, and time is money, but quite often, we don't get the benefit of that. In other words, a general contractor, s

Natural Resources committee  Everything.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, every stick and every panel that went into that building was prefabricated at our plant in the Okanagan down to plus or minus 1.5 millimetres in accuracy. That's where your time.... It's incredibly accurate. The material is perfect when it arrives, and as long as everything

Natural Resources committee  Richard, how are you?

Natural Resources committee  I'll start with the competition side. I don't really worry about it too much because I think that as long as the pie is continuing to grow, other members can come in and we can all do quite well. I'm not particularly worried about the material coming in from the U.S. market. What

Natural Resources committee  Again, it's through an alternative process, if it's not inside the building code now. We've made great strides in that. You have to remember that there are two different scenarios we're talking about. What you're talking about is a fully exposed wood wall or a wood roof. In tha

Natural Resources committee  Yes. Obviously, the fact that it crosses the border with no duties is an advantage for us when shipping south of the border, for example, for that Microsoft job. The real concern for us right now is, frankly, the price of lumber itself. The price of lumber has doubled this year.

Natural Resources committee  I touched on that a little earlier. When people want to compare building a mass timber building or a wood building with steel or concrete, they will focus on the cost of the material. At the end of the day, as long as the general contractor or the owner's rep or however that buil