International Trade committee  Depending on the scale of the project, obviously some due diligence is necessary and welcome, but my industry is not involved in that particular fund. There are others, like the net-zero accelerator. Speed and administrative burden are important considerations in the certainty co

International Trade committee  The cement sector, as you suggest, is an emission-intensive, trade-exposed sector. In fact, in the federal analyses, it has consistently been in the top three of the most emissions-intensive trade sectors. There is a recognition that our industry is uniquely exposed to the potent

International Trade committee  I think we have the right suite of instruments on the table, but you're absolutely right: It needs to happen very quickly, and it needs to happen with a level of ambition that matches what the U.S. has done with the IRA. Canada has a perennial problem around ambition. This is no

International Trade committee  We have already put in place a unique collaboration with the government through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to develop a road map to net zero, which is, as I think you're suggesting, a critical step to maintaining competitiveness in our sector i

International Trade committee  Those are two very big questions. Effectively, carbon contracts for difference are forms of production subsidies. They guarantee that the value of, for example, the carbon sequestration from a carbon capture project will be backstopped by the government. In Canada, we obviously

International Trade committee  Concrete is not typically exported. It's the cement used to make the concrete that has export potential. The technologies around the decarbonization of cement in concrete also have that export potential. Concrete is very heavy and very expensive to ship. As Mr. Cannings reference

International Trade committee  By itself, it's not enough, but in combination with some of the other financing mechanisms that were announced for the Canada growth fund, for example, it could be enough. The trick is that they need to be implemented quickly, as you suggest, so that we can have certainty about h

International Trade committee  We like to say that concrete is hyperlocal while cement is more region-based. We have 14 production facilities across the country: two in British Columbia, two in Alberta, five in Ontario, four members in Quebec and one in Nova Scotia. Geography does play a role in the viability

International Trade committee  About 40% of our cement is exported to the United States. Canada has enough capacity to meet its own demands, and the U.S. does not. It imports quite a bit of its cement, and 30% of U.S. imports come from Canada.

International Trade committee  I support the macro view that we need an industrial decarbonization policy. The problem the IRA is trying to solve is that the market is not ready to pay for the value of the carbon reductions that come from the types of technologies being supported through the IRA. We could make

International Trade committee  I'm not sure I fully understand the distinction between those. They're all sort of government programs.

International Trade committee  I think the challenge, at least in my sector, is that the types of projects we're looking at are first-commercialization applications. CCUS has never been applied at scale at a cement facility, yet around the world, a number of projects are moving in that direction, including the

International Trade committee  I think the production incentives are the missing piece of the Canadian picture. I don't want to say that the capital supports aren't useful, but in the absence of that sort of operational component—the production piece—they're not as efficient as what could be achieved with the

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me here today on behalf of the cement and concrete industry to discuss the impact of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. First, here are a few facts about my industry. Concrete is the world’s