Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 3 - Evidence - Meeting of April 29, 2010
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:06 a.m. to study the current state and future of Canada's forest sector.
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. We have the honour and pleasure to welcome a guest and leader from the industry. I welcome each and every one of you to the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. I am Senator Percy Mockler, from New Brunswick, and I am the chair of the committee.
The committee is continuing its study on the current state and future of Canada's forest sector so we can partner to recommend to government and governments what I will dare say are recommendations to create a better climate for the industry. We are also looking at sharing our knowledge with additional forestry stakeholders to ensure this is all about quality of life for Canadians, and to create quality and stable jobs.
Today we welcome Ms. Diana Blenkhorn, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Maritime Lumber Bureau.
[Translation]
On behalf of all the senators, I thank you for having accepted our invitation to appear before this committee.
[English]
I will ask senators to bear with me as I state for the record that Ms. Diana Blenkhorn has held the position of President and CEO of the Maritime Lumber Bureau for the past 29 years. As of April, 2010, she has spent a total of 34 years in the industry. She is Canada's representative and has been appointed as an officer of the American Wood Council. Since 1986, she has had the distinction of providing leadership and coordinating the four Atlantic provinces and achieving the Atlantic exclusion from tariffs and duties — trade remedies — in the ongoing Canada-U.S. softwood lumber file.
I would also say that the industry knows her, and she knows the industry. When we talk about accountability, being results oriented and can-do spirit, we all think of Diana Blenkhorn. At this point, Ms. Blenkhorn, I will ask you to make your presentation. The presentation will be followed by questions from the senators. Thank you and welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Diana Blenkhorn, President and Chief Executive Officer, Maritime Lumber Bureau: Thank you very much, Senator Mockler and senators, for inviting me here, and thank you for your good work on this committee. I have followed some of the witnesses who have appeared before you. Thankfully, with the technology today and the reporting capability through Hansard, I have been able to follow some of the exciting topics you have studied. As I said, I am delighted and privileged to be part of it and to have the opportunity to present testimony to you as a witness.
The Maritime Lumber Bureau, which is the organization that directly compensates me for the work I do on behalf of the industry, has, since 1938, represented the interests of the solid wood sector in Atlantic Canada. Our principal scope of activities is in the areas of market access and quality control. As such, we are a regulator, a point that often gets missed with some of our promotional activities. However, we are a regulator, and are accredited by numerous Canadian and international bodies, which include the United States, the European Union, China and Japan. We are also a promoter and consider ourselves to be problem solvers.
It has been said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. As such, the crisis in the forest sector during the past two years has resulted in distinct efforts to refocus our activities on new market opportunities, both at home and abroad.
I was asked to address specifically our efforts in promoting wood construction in Canada, specifically those activities taking place within Atlantic Canada, and to discuss the impacts of the Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber Agreement.
Honourable senators, if there is time remaining at the end of my presentation, with your indulgence, I would like to take the opportunity to discuss an issue of forest health that impacts Atlantic Canada, particularly Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Our forests are contiguous and this issue has the potential to move across the country. I think it is something that should be brought up before this committee and seems to fit well within your mandate, having reviewed it.
I know that in your report, you will recommend specific measures to be put forward by the federal government to lay the foundation of the vision for long-term positioning and competitiveness of the forest industry in Canada. The latter item that I raise will be as pertinent as market access and other areas because we need a healthy forest to be able to position ourselves.
We are working with our partners in Canada, specifically the Canadian Wood Council, New Brunswick Forest Products Association, Forest Products Association of Nova Scotia and many others across the country, in British Columbia and in Quebec, to develop a comprehensive and coordinated wood first program.
I will discuss our efforts in Atlantic Canada but touch on our involvement as partners elsewhere in the country. To be successful, we need a pan-Canadian or pan-North American coordinated effort to understand and create a wood culture.
Our particular efforts began last June. We worked with the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to launch the wood first concept. We launched it at the municipal level and built from there. ``Wood first'' is designed to build a wood culture in Canada.
As a country, and indeed the Atlantic region, we are economically dependent on the forest sector. We have focused our efforts on educating our importers — the foreign customers — with little or no additional effort to educate Canadians. Wood, forest and lumber production is part of our heritage and over time, perhaps, we have taken for granted that it is a logical product of choice for both environmental and building attributes. We have neglected to invest in the broad range of educational activities that are needed to inform future generations of Canadians.
As I have said, the material does have many desired attributes, including environmental correctness, which is critical. If we encourage our foreign importers to use it, we must start leading by example. We need a wood culture in this country.
We started with inviting every mayor in the four Atlantic provinces to a session that took place in Moncton last June. There we began the process of presenting the environmental correctness and attributes of wood, and laid out what we needed to do to work collectively to create that wood culture. We met with the unions of municipalities in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and, in addition, made presentations to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
As a result, many resolutions were passed that began the long process of focusing the efforts on wood as a desirable building material for non-residential construction. From there we worked with the provincial governments, and we have ideas of changing legislation or implementing legislation similar to legislation found elsewhere. In addition, we became aware that the specifiers needed to specify wood to be successful; you cannot have committed municipalities, provinces and governors without committed specifiers. We began a process of educating architects and engineers.
I know a lot about lumber, but technology is not my strong point.
Why wood; why would we specify wood and why should they specify wood? Essentially wood is a carbon sink, it is renewable, recyclable, reusable and organic; it cleans the air and water; provides oxygen, is bio-degradable, is a habitat source; it avoids carbon; it is strong, lightweight, flexible, diverse and attractive. On that point, there have been a number of studies that talk about the healing benefits of hospitals and nursing homes constructed of wood. It is easy to use, available, inexpensive and versatile.
If we do not use wood, what will we use? You have opportunities in concrete and steel, and life cycle assessment demonstrates they create carbon emissions and take excessive energy to produce; neither is renewable.
I will spend a little bit of time talking about carbon because specifying carbon and carbon footprint, in our view, is the primary tool in advancing a wood first culture and creating a public awareness of its many benefits.
An average wood home stores 30 tonnes of carbon, which is equal to driving a car for five years. If a wood home, on an average size, stores that amount of carbon, we can only assess ourselves what volume would be stored through non- residential applications.
During the Canadian Olympic Games in Vancouver, with the support of British Columbia — and I think we really need to look at this — wood was the primary specified building material for a number of reasons. The carbon footprint for all new structure had been predetermined. We collectively determined the best way to showcase wood and what was possible to the world was through the Olympics. Therefore, a number of facilities were established.
You will note there were 8 million kg of carbon sequestered from those buildings and 17 million kg of avoided emissions. The one I would like to draw your attention to and the one we are working hard on in Atlantic Canada is the top left photograph, which is the Richmond Olympic Oval. It has a 200-foot span, and the roof is constructed with two-by-four material. The technology was developed to use beetle-kill timber in British Columbia, which produces two-by-four lumber. This slide shows that the timber had other uses.
The technology can be adapted for use in provinces like Atlantic Canada where our trees grow differently than the trees in British Columbia. We do not have long lengths of timber. We principally produce two-by-four construction- grade material.
Imagine the number of arenas, curling rinks and civic complexes currently built with some of the infrastructure spending. Few were to be built from wood until we started bringing this message and indicating the specifiers.
At the same time, British Columbia passed its wood first legislation. This legislation was directed to facilitate a wood culture by requiring the use of wood as the primary material in all provincially-funded buildings. We are in the process of promoting similar acts in the Atlantic provinces. Few people understand that New Brunswick is second only to British Columbia in its economic dependence on the forest products sector.
We want to create wood policies. Wood policies adopted in other jurisdictions will promote the future and a healthy forest. We looked at measures like build with wood resolutions. Since 2002, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has passed wood first resolutions, but the provinces and the federal government have not promoted wood first policies in either their building codes or funding mechanisms for facilities.
It is important to say that by establishing a wood first policy, we should not fear that it would restrict the ability of Canada's steel or concrete industries to be successful. Building codes have specific requirements. There is a place for the industries to work in harmony. For example, a structure like the speed skating oval used steel connector plates, although the visible material was wood. The wood created the soundproofing and eliminated condensation. The attributes of wood were combined in partnership with other competing materials.
Wood policies exist in Quebec and British Columbia and federally in France and New Zealand. There is carbon tax legislation in British Columbia. When the United Kingdom passed legislation to reduce the carbon footprint by 10 per cent, wood became the material of choice.
We suggest that in creating wood first legislation and policies, the objective should be simple. Wood should be the first choice where it can be used in public buildings. The policies should be SMART, that is, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Policies should require the lowest carbon footprint for government projects. In requiring the lowest carbon footprint, further debate is stemmed on the environmental correctness of wood as a building material.
We can get caught up in debating the forest resource and whether Canada's forests are growing or declining — and, by the way, forestry resources have been increasing for a long time. However, there is no debate about the attributes of wood when requiring the lowest carbon footprint.
We should incorporate and develop capabilities that exist with the life cycle analysis in both policy and practice, that is, energy consumed in producing wood and in constructing with wood compared with other building materials. We need to create awareness of the role of forests and building practices to mitigate climate change and opportunities for local action.
We should retain architects and engineers who know wood. However, we cannot have these professionals know wood unless we educate them. I said earlier that we have taken on some of that responsibility. We must ensure that specifiers, funders and builders ask for and specify wood.
I talked about local opportunities because that is what I was asked to do. Our program is what I call a double- barrelled shotgun. The program deals with local opportunities and enhancing and increasing export opportunities where Atlantic Canada is well-positioned geographically and has a product mix to do so.
We need to diversify. The current crisis we have recently witnessed demonstrates conclusively that we need to be in a variety of markets. If our only market is the United States, which is going through its sub-prime mortgage crisis, the industry will continue to suffer. Atlantic Canada has seen that happen in the past. In 1993, our primary market was offshore when the overseas market closed to us overnight as a result of phyto-sanitary concerns. We were fortunate the United States market was emerging. In both instances, we concentrated on single market export opportunities.
The philosophy is now to create a wood culture. The solution for Atlantic Canada is market diversification. We are looking at new export markets. Specifically, we are looking at the Caribbean. Geographically, Atlantic Canada is well placed to supply the region, as are other parts of Canada. With the Atlantic Gateway shipping facilities at the Port of Halifax and political changes taking place in many Caribbean countries, we believe Atlantic Canada is well positioned. We have worked with Caribbean countries to develop appropriate building codes that deal with their concerns — hurricanes, wind resistance and seismic. Their building codes are favourable to wood.
We have done some work through the Canada Wood Council and other organizations in China. We are also looking at the Middle East, and we never forget the historic market of Europe. We worked closely with our partners in the United States to expand a Wood WORKS! Program. We worked to promote the use of wood in non-residential structures.
We talk about geographic market diversification. I often speak of Atlantic Canada as being in a triangle. We are surrounded by the United States, the rest of Canada and Europe. We need to look at those realities when determining the markets we will focus on.
However, coming back to my first comments, if we do not use wood in Canada and if we do not have a wood culture, what is the message sent to create new market opportunities elsewhere?
My next slide discusses economic viability. I could create a similar slide for all of Canada. I know many senators have interests elsewhere. The situation is largely the same whether you are in Quebec, Manitoba or Ontario. This slide illustrates the number of sawmills located in Atlantic Canada in 2006. Senators will see that in 75 of those communities, the wood industry was the sole industrial employer. Move forward to 2009, and see a 70 per cent decline in production and an 80 per cent decline in operational facilities impacted either by temporary or permanent closures as a result of the crisis.
However, the industry continues to invest in the activities I outlined today because they can see a future. They understand the economic contributions the industry has made historically. We are a region that operates primarily family-owned facilities. They have already made the investment.
I will move to the second part of what you have asked me to do, that is, to talk about impacts of the Softwood Lumber Agreement. The impacts are not unrelated to the market development program.
In the world of softwood lumber, whether we talk about the United States or the market development program it is important to understand that the entire Atlantic region is linked. We do not operate as specific provinces. While we respect the governance structure in the region, we operate as a region. This is the only theoretical operational provision that will produce the productive uses of the available resources and there is another reason.
Since 1986, Atlantic Canada has been excluded from all tariffs and trade remedies. This is text from the current Softwood Lumber Agreement signed in October of 2006. I ask you note that you will not find in that agreement any acknowledgment of a specific province. All the references for exclusion refer to the Maritimes; a footnote describing the Maritimes includes the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Part of the argument, and it is only part, we presented to the United States since 1986 is that we operate as a single wood basket. We have pulpwood that moves between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to supply the various facilities. We have saw log material that moves between the three Maritime provinces. The grade mark or quality assurance from the regulator, which is the Maritime Lumber Bureau, applies to all of the provinces. We have been recognized even in the forestry cover as a distinct region within Canada.
In the United States, trade law does not permit province specific rates under trade issues. It does not permit a province specific rate for countervailing duties or anti-dumping. That is why, as the softwood lumber dispute goes forward and you may have had evidence from my colleagues in Quebec, for example, saying we are de minimis, we have done the investigation, there is no subsidy, but we are forced to pay the country wide rate. It is U.S. law that prescribes that the countrywide rate applies to all provinces.
U.S. law has a loophole that permits the recognition of political subdivisions of a distinct region in a country not defined by provincial boundaries. We presented that argument in 1986, along with the landholders, the private operators and a few public companies. We pointed out the buying of private land, the high operating prices and other things that provided for the recognition, and we have taken that same argument forward.
As I said to Senator Mockler, I have to acknowledge the work and the efforts of the Senate and the committees in the past concerning Atlantic Canada. As the Softwood Lumber Agreement came into Canadian legislation for enforcement purposes, we ran into a situation where we do not recognize political subdivisions of regions, we only recognized provinces. Canadian legislation does not recognize exclusions but rather provides zero rates. The exclusion for Atlantic Canada had been in place since 1986. It was not a zero rate. Our concern was that if during the course of the agreement — and our concern has certainly proven realistic — there were issues and solutions where the proposed solution was to up the tax by 5 per cent or 10 per cent or 2 per cent and, unfortunately, those who were at 5 per cent would go to 10 per cent, those at 10 per cent would go to 15 per cent, but those at 0 per cent would go to 5 per cent — we would not have had an exclusion.
We worked with all the committees, particularly with the Senate committee, before becoming legislation, and I want to extend our sincere appreciation for the support and recognition we received. It was an innovative method of approaching legislation in Canada and it has worked to acknowledge something that had been granted by the United States for 23 years.
Those who believe that it provided a distinct advantage should look at the reality of what happened. This slide is probably the most informative slide that can be used in the area of softwood lumber. It goes back to the first countervailing duty case solved through a memorandum of understanding between the two countries in 1986. Those are the vertical lines. The blue line is the Maritime shipments over that period, and the red line in the centre marks the only time in the past 23 years that there has been free trade in softwood lumber, where there has been no trade remedy, either an agreement or litigation in place. I do not think that is well understood.
I am happy to tell you, that under the SLA and the current pricing structure — and we will not talk about the currency evaluation — that Canada is about to embark, for the first time since 1996, in the next month on quasi-free trade where there will be no tax applicable because the agreement has a ceiling. That will apply to all provinces but Quebec and Ontario, which have been negatively impacted through the arbitration under the agreement.
That is important because we keep talking about the Softwood Lumber Agreement as if it were new but it really has a 23-year history where there has been no free trade in Canada except for Atlantic Canada through the recognition of those facts.
This is critical to our future because the real point I am making here is this is what happened to our shipments under the SLA with an exclusion. I previously showed the number of operating facilities with an exclusion. Can you imagine what I would be telling you without exclusion?
Our current production levels in the region are below where they were in 1995, and that is with the ability to penetrate the United States market without further penalties under the agreement.
I can break this slide down by province, but our biggest most effective argument is that we are a distinct region rather than individual provinces and we work hard to continue with that message.
My invitation was to be specific about activities affecting the Province of New Brunswick and I am specifically telling you that the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador are linked when it comes to these issues. So too are they linked in their imminent success. Therefore, if moving forward at the end of the SLA we are not successful in recreating this, despite the information that may be forthcoming, we need to ensure that the region continues to be recognized, not individual provinces.
Nothing is for certain, but given the way that U.S. law deals with trade agreements, if one province received allegations that the other three could stay as a unit and we start using what I call provincial withdrawals, it is important that we continue to operate with the integrity that we committed to under the agreement. It is important that we maintain the market-based pricing policies that we committed to under the agreement and move forward and look to the future at the expiration or extension of this agreement by maintaining that exemption.
The 3.5 billion board feet produced in a year was an anomaly and it came after Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia, where wood was on the ground, blown down, which had to be processed. However, we generally were producing about 2.4 billion board feet a year as typical Atlantic volume, and production for 2009 did not hit 960 million. Shipments are a different aspect. They also, as we saw from the previous slide, were deteriorated but the production has declined.
This slide illustrates the U.S. shipments by quarter. I break this down because when you are talking about recovery sometimes you will have a strong building season, particularly in the United States, and people will say things are looking up. We say you cannot compare it to the previous quarter in any fiscal period; you need to compare it to the same quarter of the previous fiscal period to ensure you track seasonal highs and lows.
Finally, before I get into my phyto-sanitary remarks, the reason we have looked at the Wood First program, market diversification, continued to monitor the softwood lumber agreement, continued to maintain all the obligations that we have taken to ensure the integrity is continually understood, can be summed in looking to our future. Along that line, I like this particular quote. They tell me it did not translate well into French, so I apologize to the translators. ``Change is the law of life, and those that only look to the past or the present will miss the future.'' The things we have put in place and the things we are working on today in creating a wood culture in Canada and maintaining our obligations and partnerships in the United States look to the future with continued prosperity.
Mr. Chair, am I all right with time to talk a bit about the phyto-sanitary issue?
The Chair: Yes.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I refer to an area that may require further study, and it deals with the health of Canadian forests and the impact insects of a foreign variety have on them.
We have legislation in Canada through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, which deals with quarantine and identification. It is only when an imported pest, a pest we refer to as an invasive and alien species, is intercepted, is it considered an emergency. There is little coordination between CFIA, and the Canadian forest sector, and historically those issues have been brought to the attention of Canadian Forest Service.
In 2000, Nova Scotia identified the brown spruce longhorn beetle, BSLB, which in its native habitat of Europe is a secondary pest and not considered a pest of significance. As it has established itself in Canada, and specifically Atlantic Canada, we do not know how to respond. We do not know whether it will mate with our native bark beetles. We do not know whether there will be forest devastation. There is ongoing research.
Collectively, there are issues that need to be addressed that are affecting our ability to respond. Our only tool in the toolbox seems to be regulation, and those regulations further affect a sector already suffering because they target artificial movement when there is strong evidence that the beetle is moving through natural causes. The federal government funding to deal with the issue and slow the spread is largely related to restrictive requirements in legislation; that it has to be quantified as an emergency rather than an ongoing initiative to deal with forest health. It is spreading in very low prevalence. Essentially, we have mass trappings and huge investments in Nova Scotia, to slow the spread. Each year, we have invested in research to create biological methods of identification. Each year, we are picking up an extra two or three beetles, but each year the solution with a restricted toolbox and restricted dollars for a response, is to regulate the industry even further.
We are committed to slowing the spread. Because of the unknown, there is no desire on the part of anyone to have BSLB, the non-indigenous species, be detected in New Brunswick, from where it could spread to Nova Scotia and Quebec. We need a better effort in coordinating responses not related to emergencies. We need to have dollars made available to look after the research. We need to have dollars made available to create a toolbox that promotes the use of affected forests, not leaving them to harbour insects. We need more interest in investment in innovative and effective solutions and less emphasis on restricting the industry.
I could spend all of my time talking about some specifics on this file. I would be negligent if I did not bring it to the attention of this committee. I think it fits within the vision and changes that we might make in the system over time. We have the species in Nova Scotia, but I think we can create and implement a manageable pest model that could be used elsewhere in Canada when we are next faced with the same problem. As an importing country, we will face it again. We already have Asian gypsy moth and emerald ash borer. Fortunately, we do not have other insects other than BSLB that are non-indigenous in the coniferous forests.
Coordinating with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is something to think about. I am not being critical of the services. We have worked hard to develop new and innovative approaches with officials. To a large degree, they are restricted by the provisions of Canadian legislation to the point where it is not necessarily an effective way forward.
I thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you. I hope I shared some thought provoking messages, and I will be delighted to answer any questions I can.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Blenkhorn, for an exposé that has enriched the committee. It was an extraordinary presentation.
Senator Mercer: Thank you for being here. It seems I get to see you every quarter in one capacity or another around Atlantic Canada or here in Ottawa.
I appreciate your look at forest health. Perhaps we might want to separate that issue and talk about it separately. You have raised an important issue. I will avoid talking about that for a moment.
One of the benefits of this committee that there are six Maritimers on this committee and the rest want to be Maritimers. Some of us understand the geography better than others.
You mentioned a wood first policy with municipalities. Could you tell us of any successes, and could you tell us about any examples that would be worth seeing? Those of us from Atlantic Canada could visit them. I am not suggesting the committee take another trip.
Ms. Blenkhorn: There have been successes, and most of them are in construction or design. We started this process a year ago. Both rural unions of municipalities in New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia are in the process, if they have not adopted them, of wood first resolutions for all processes.
As a result of our education of design professionals, architects and engineers, a huge facility has been announced in Colchester, Nova Scotia. That facility will be built of wood and will include one swimming pool, two ice surfaces, a library and a community centre. Another facility at Lunenburg will be built of wood. I am in the process of receiving similar announcements from New Brunswick.
I would be delighted to invite all the senators and any interested parties to an event we are hosting on June 10 and 11. We have invited all of the provincially elected representatives in the four provinces to put forward their projects and advance the culture so others like yourselves and the interested public can see these facilities.
Senator Mercer: I will certainly try to follow the Colchester and Lunenburg projects. As you know, there is a fair amount of construction in the greater Halifax area in preparation for the 2011 Canada Games. We referred to the speed skating oval in Richmond, which some of us have seen.
Has there been any attempt to make those games green by using wood as a major feature?
Ms. Blenkhorn: As you know, the Canada Games facility was built near Lacewood Drive in Halifax. As far as I know, it does not have a lick of wood in it. Having that disappointment face us, we think that, again, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Faced with that adversity, we are moving to have all the other facilities have a wood feature. Some of our project ideas in this business plan would include having a visible presence join the Canada Winter Games.
Senator Mercer: You mentioned the Atlantic Gateway and the Port of Halifax. I will put on my other hat as a member of the Transport Committee. Have you seen any evidence that governments have announced the Atlantic Gateway? We have had the Pacific Gateway, the Continental Gateway and the Atlantic Gateway. Some of us have a difficulty seeing any progress or any movement at all on the Atlantic Gateway.
You are involved in the export of a primary resource. Have you seen any change since governments have been talking about the Atlantic Gateway?
Ms. Blenkhorn: It is fair to say it is difficult to put it through the test to identify change because we are not exporting and the volumes are down.
I have identified change in our ability to market the availability and the commitment from some of the shipping lines. The success of this program will allow us to test.
Senator Plett: Thank you for coming out and giving us a marvellous presentation. I have learned so much in this committee in the last half year. I have enjoyed it a lot.
I am from the school which believes we should educate rather than legislate. I have some difficulties with legislating amounts of wood into buildings, yet I certainly see the merits of it. We have seen some wonderful buildings constructed of wood, as Senator Mercer has pointed out.
Other witnesses have said there is a lack of education in universities, teaching architects and engineers. You alluded to that.
Does the Maritime Lumber Bureau have any input into the National Building Code? Are you on some kind of committee, do you lobby, or do you help create some of the regulations?
Ms. Blenkhorn: I have input into the National Building Code because I sit as Canada's President of the National Lumber Grades Authority, which is Canada's national grading role. I am also on the board of directors of the Canadian Wood Council and it, with the National Lumber Grades Authority, has input into changes. It is really our codes and standards body to ensure the use of wood.
To answer your question, wood is well represented and has the opportunity to influence the National Building Code where appropriate. The provinces all adopt the National Building Code with the opportunity for some movement.
Senator Plett: Having said that, I believe the National Building Code does not allow any wood non-residential commercial buildings to be more than four storeys, with a few exceptions, such as one in Quebec City, which we visited.
Ms. Blenkhorn: There is one in British Columbia, also.
Senator Plett: Yes, we did not see that one but we saw the one in Quebec City and it is great building.
Were the NBC to open up to allow buildings of seven, eight or 10 storeys, would that help some of the wood problems?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Yes, it would. As you rightly said, the National Building Code specifies four-storey sprinklered facilities. Provinces such as British Columbia and Quebec have overruled the National Building Code; they have adopted it but they have additional provisions that permit up to six storey sprinklered buildings.
Each province retains the right to have its own provincial structures. However, if you want to create a wood culture, you need to facilitate the use of wood. There is evidence that wood is a logical building material for six storey buildings under certain conditions that include sprinkler systems. Two provinces are using wood in non-residential buildings. Wood stores carbon, which we have presented as one of its many qualities. Wood also addresses a number of those other environmental correctness issue. Given that, it would seem to me that the building code should facilitate the culture by permitting wood use where appropriate.
Senator Plett: Yesterday in the chamber, we discussed quotas on boards of directors as opposed to just taking the top brains and putting them on the boards. This is a similar issue of education and allowing the building code to adapt.
If we have government buildings and the government demands that a certain carbon footprint be created — that we would be talking more about environment and the government would insist on that — would that do the same thing?
We have had concrete and steel people in who say let the market dictate; do not demand that a certain amount be wood because you are not demanding that a certain amount be steel.
If we did that, would it help address some of the concerns?
Ms. Blenkhorn: I understand your role and the role of all elected representatives is to provide balanced representation for the industrial sector in Canada. If legislation and regulation required the lowest carbon footprint, then it would automatically direct it to wood.
I do not think I have suggested that you federally require wood first. Federally, I suggested that you require policies that make the lowest carbon footprint. That will ultimately move to address our concerns.
I have to say I could not agree with you more that we need to educate. I prefer education to legislation. However, we do need evidence in Canada that the elected representatives have embraced a wood culture. The best way to demonstrate that is through regulation or legislation, modifications that address the environmental correctness rather than the specific product.
Senator Robichaud: You say you are making efforts to educate the specifiers.
What methods are used, or what is the process? Are people open to that or is there resistance? It implies a bit of change, does it not?
Ms. Blenkhorn: It does. I am happy to tell you we just presented two wood design seminars — one in Halifax and one in Moncton — on March 30 and 31. One speaker discussed preservative treatments to stains and paints on wood. The second speaker discussed architectural design, and four storey versus six storey buildings. The third speaker was engineer Gerry Epp who designed the wood wave roof at the Richmond Olympic Oval. That structure permits two-by- four construction.
We hosted that complementary event. We felt it was the best approach. Also, we used the idea of providing continuing education design credits for participants because architects and engineers, through their organizations, need continuing education design credits. I am happy to tell you that, in Halifax, we had 110 participants and it was one of the highest attended events of any in Canada. We had 52 participants in Moncton. Based on the feedback, it was one of the best sessions, they had attended and they are open to more. We will do more. Again, the program is new. It is not yet 30 days since the last events in Moncton and Halifax, but the response in Atlantic Canada was equal to or surpassed that of elsewhere in the country.
Senator Robichaud: Is carbon storage part of the education process for specifiers? Are they starting to put any value on carbon storage?
Ms. Blenkhorn: It is part of our consistent messaging. I do not propose to be an expert on all environmental attributes. I am educated about and can speak to them. We need to create consistent messaging backed up by fact. That messaging needs to expand to all of North America. It should not be restricted to a region, province or country.
If carbon storage applies to non-residential large construction in Canada, it certainly applies to the United States. The U.K. reduced carbon by 10 per cent by building with wood and has embraced the philosophy in a country not as dependent on wood as Canada is. We need that consistent messaging.
The answer to your question is yes. Every time we do education programs, the message is brought forward by a variety of people. It has become one of my mantras every time I address any group.
Senator Robichaud: Is there effort to educate specifiers in the United States?
Ms. Blenkhorn: I believe the committee will hear from Bob Glowinski next Thursday. I sit as a Canadian representative on his group. He will address some collaborative efforts to take that message to the United States.
Senator Ogilvie: Regarding your comments on the brown spruce longhorn beetle, I think initially that the efforts were poorly handled. You suggested the efforts essentially placed all responsibility on the harvester through rules I personally think were not well thought out.
Ms. Blenkhorn: We agree.
Senator Ogilvie: I manage some forest myself. I am well aware of our native spruce beetle, which takes an annual toll throughout much of Nova Scotia. Dealing with these little rascals is more than a bureaucratic challenge.
I have a question regarding lumber. Are the board feet you identified as our production based on certified, stamped lumber or does it include rough-cut lumber?
Ms. Blenkhorn: It includes everything.
Senator Ogilvie: It includes rough-cut. That does not show up on your producers slide.
On your big slides, I detected some barely visible dots in addition to the larger circles for mills. Was that an artefact or was that an attempt to identify smaller mills?
Ms. Blenkhorn: No, I treat every mill the same. There is no variation between how the bureau represents a large mill versus a small mill.
Senator Ogilvie: I am quite familiar with rural Nova Scotia. I am aware of rural mills that do not show up on your material. I wonder if the little spot in roughly the Bennett Bay area of the Scotts Bay region and near Noel represents smaller mills.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I should not mislead you. Those mills are probably not full-time members of the Maritime Lumber Bureau. They are probably seasonal operators that would secure services to access where there is regulation in the market. My illustrations includes only full-time members of the bureau for whom a sawmill is their only business.
Senator Ogilvie: I should have worded the question better. The mills with which I am familiar are seasonal mills that you indicate are not included on your slide.
Ms. Blenkhorn: Seasonal mills are not included.
Senator Ogilvie: My real issue is carbon. Once again, I want to say that virtually everything I build is with wood. I love wood and my comment is not coming from an anti-wood point of view.
First, I think it is critical that when we deal with the issue of carbon, we must understand what we are dealing with. Carbon is stored in lumber. In fact, it is increasingly understood that lumber stores carbon that will ultimately return to carbon dioxide down the road. We need to acknowledge that.
Second, trees are a wonderful part of the ecosystem. They use carbon dioxide as part of their respiratory system, but they also shed a tremendous amount of carbon annually through leaves, bark, et cetera. When lumber is milled, its crudest form — slab wood — goes immediately as an energy source and is returned as carbon dioxide either directly or in the form of pellets, et cetera.
I want to come back to the importance of the issue as I see it. As we ultimately come to understand better the issue of carbon in the environment and deal with it realistically instead of emotionally, the use of wood has a positive role. However, we need to use the correct terminology and acknowledge the overall impact; otherwise, we will be caught down the road in having society believing things that subsequently turn out not to be correct in regard to the ultimate issue.
Wood is part of an overall strategic plan and a very valuable storage form of carbon. However, other aspects of the harvest and production of lumber are part of the larger issue of carbon in the environment.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I do not disagree with you. I said a few minutes ago that I am not an expert. My slides never indicated zero carbon emissions. They talk about carbon sequestration and emissions avoided with wood opposed to other building materials.
Your point is well taken. When I talk about consistent messaging, I refer to consistent factual messaging that can be easily understood in order to advance the issues. I do not know if your committee heard from FPInnovations. That organization conducted some of the lifecycle and carbon assessments. I strongly recommend the committee hear from them if you are interested in that particular scope as they are the experts, not I.
Senator Ogilvie: I appreciate what you have said. The way we use language sometimes can be interpreted differently by others. Your points are well taken, and it is a very valuable resource.
Ms. Blenkhorn: Thank you.
Senator Mahovlich: What country embraces wood more than any other?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Probably Norway or Finland. The recent Olympics held in Norway showcased wood completely. Finland considers itself to completely sustainable with its various certification programs. I like to think that if you ask Norway or Finland, they would say that they will come to Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: I am a great believer that history is a great teacher. An insect infiltrated Ontario about 50 years ago. I remember seeing all the dead elm trees from Dutch elm disease. Did we learn anything from that? If I try to find an elm tree in the city of Toronto, I can only find one or two.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I think we have learned, but we are not treating, we are removing, which is your point. Perhaps tree removal is a treatment, but you cannot mow down a whole forest. You can take down elm trees in residential areas. I live with the same thing. Dutch elm disease in Nova Scotia has moved into the communities. Truro does not have elm trees, and Emerson no longer has elm trees. We have been dealing with tree removal. We have learned some things. I suggest that there is much more to learn and many changes that need to be made.
Canada is the only country in the world that regulates its exports for phyto-sanitary reasons. We have regulation and legislation on imports. We do not monitor the imports that come into the country that could harbour insects to the same degree that we regulate our own exporters. It is rendering them uncompetitive because the importing country prescribes the requirements. They regulate. They monitor. We do both.
Senator Eaton: Your last remark was very interesting. We do not regulate so much in as regulate out. Perhaps we can recommend that change.
You talked about creating a pan-Canadian effort or a pan-North American effort. We have seen, and I am sure you have read in Hansard, that our country consists of many silos. What goes on in Quebec or in British Columbia does not always translate across the country. Some provinces are better than others at promoting wood. How do you see promoting a more pan-Canadian effort so that best practices are adopted and we help each other across this country?
Ms. Blenkhorn: First, even the Auditor General's report in Canada picked up our deficiencies with monitoring what was coming into the country and our efforts in that area. It is not just taking my word for it. I want to ensure that it did not come across as a slanderous comment; it was factual.
Senator Eaton: Could we insist? How much wood do we import, and could we insist that countries exporting to us monitor?
Ms. Blenkhorn: We need to do a better job in monitoring, and it is not an area that is appropriately funded, in my view, by CFIA. They have a great program on what goes out, but not necessarily monitoring. Some work is done. That is why I have raised it with you. Yes, I think we can.
How much wood do we import? We do not import a lot of commodity grade lumber other than hardwood, but every product that comes into Canada from every country in the world is generally sitting on a wood pallet or wood packaging, whether it is cores from China or steel or refrigerators.
Senator Eaton: When we export to other countries, they have certain regulations.
Ms. Blenkhorn: Import regulations.
Senator Eaton: Could we impose the same import regulations?
Ms. Blenkhorn: We could, and that would be helpful, because Canada's export regulations are usually excessive compared to the importing country's regulations. It is more difficult to meet what our own country requires for phyto- sanitary materials in order to allow us to export a product than what is required by the importing country.
Senator Eaton: We could start there.
Ms. Blenkhorn: Yes.
Senator Eaton: Could you answer about your pan-Canadian effort here?
Ms. Blenkhorn: We have an organization called the Canadian Wood Council. That organization has gone through some difficulties and growing pains and refocusing. We have developed Wood WORKS! programs in Canada under the umbrella of the Canadian Wood Council. They have a province-specific component, and they exist in a big way in British Columbia and Ontario, and to a lesser degree in Alberta and Quebec, although Quebec is growing, and it does not exist in Atlantic Canada yet. That is where we are going.
It is my firm belief that Wood WORKS! needs an umbrella organization like the Canadian Wood Council. It can have provincial operational facilities, because what works in Nova Scotia is probably very different that what works in British Columbia.
Senator Eaton: Yes, but they should be speaking to each other.
Ms. Blenkhorn: That is exactly right. It needs an enhanced, coordinating approach. I personally do not believe it should be restricted to within Canada. If we are going to send Canadian dollars to fund those activities in the United States, we need to coordinate it across North America.
Senator Eaton: Why are we sending Canadian dollars to the United States?
Ms. Blenkhorn: That is our biggest market.
Senator Eaton: Would you like us to recommend a wood first federal program? Do you see an advantage in that?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Yes, I would like us to recommend a program, whether it is called ``wood first'' or ``enhancing the Wood WORKS! Program'', because the federal government does invest in Wood WORKS! through the Canadian Forest Service. I think it is all through the Canadian Forest Service and other regional development programs.
All of those dollars can be more productively utilized by a better coordinated approach, and that is a personal opinion. I do not think it is bad. I do not think it is non-existent. It is one of the things we can do better and get more productivity through better coordination.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Ms. Blenkhorn, thank you for your excellent presentation. To begin with, I would like to tell you that all of my collegues around the table are for the use of wood, whether it be for residential projects, commercial projects, governmental projects, et cetera.
A few weeks ago in the House of Commons, a bill requiring the government to use wood in its own buildings was adopted by a majority. The bill is not yet in effect; it is currently being studied by the Senate.
Do you believe that it is the goverment's role to force the use of wood, particularly a certain percentage of it, whether it be in its own buildings or in private buildings? Is it not rather the role of producers, engineers, and associations such as yours to show that using wood instead of another material has environmental attributes, economic benefits, et cetera?
[English]
Ms. Blenkhorn: That is a difficult question. It comes back to whether you should educate or legislate. You used the word ``force.'' I would use the word ``facilitate'' the use of wood where it is appropriate for a building need as opposed to an alternative building material.
We have a country where the forest industry is the largest economic contributor and does more than mines, energy and all of those sectors combined. We do not force people to drive cars, but we pass legislation that facilitates the use of them, and we assist those industries when they are in distress.
I agree that we should educate versus legislate, but sometimes you have to create the sponge to educate. There must be willingness and a need to want the information. When there is a move that demonstrates the support or the facilitation of the industry, such as the legislation you speak of, it creates an atmosphere where education is wanted and, over time, the usefulness of the legislation will be replaced by a specification.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Earlier, you spoke of exporting the products from your region to the United States and Europe. The base selling price of this product, whether it is sold to the United States or Europe — let us disregard currency for the moment —, is it at the same value that the market will allow for? For example, in Europe wood is more expensive; can you allow yourself to sell it at a higher price or is the plant gate price the same everywhere, be it in Europe or Asia? I understand that Asia is a bit far for you, so let us talk about Europe.
[English]
Ms. Blenkhorn: There are two parts to your question. First, the cost of production varies. We have very high costs of production because of the volume of private land in Atlantic Canada and the cost of wood. As a consequence, we become price takers, not price makers. It is a commodity product. Other countries in the world are dependent on wood production, as I mentioned earlier in answer to Senator Mahovlich and still others that are growing in the EU. Whether you are talking about Europe or the United States, the issues around the marketplace and the demand in those specific countries will determine the price, not the cost of production.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Mr. Chairman, I have one more question to ask. On a few occasions in the past year, we met with the president of the Ordre des architectes du Québec, who said he was very much for the use of wood in non-residential buildings and regretted the fact that his architect and engineer collegues did not specify the use of wood in their plans and specifications.
One wonders if this is a result of laziness or negligence. We are under the impression that it is rather a lack of knowledge concerning the benefits of wood. What should be done to see to it that architects and engineers increasingly support the use of wood or, at least, that they consider it on an equal basis?
When we look at these plans and specifications, we can see that steel and concrete are indeed specified, but wood is very rarely so. In your opinion, what can be done in order to get architects and engineers to specify wood more often?
[English]
Ms. Blenkhorn: Thank you for asking that question.
It begins long before they become architects and engineers. The curricula in our school system should focus on the value of the forest and some of the other things we talked about. Instead of mandatory legislation on using wood, we might consider some mandatory curriculum material that requires an engineering program to have some wood use material in it. There are a few universities in Canada that use wood as a teaching tool.
Senator Duffy: Ms. Blenkhorn, it is great to see you again. I will follow up on Senator Rivard's question in just a moment, but I think it is important to put on the record how well the Maritime Lumber Bureau did as a small organization based in Amherst. What you did for Atlantic Canada in negotiations with the United States was absolutely phenomenal when you consider people from a small area going into that community. I remember meeting Tony, your colleague, in Washington with this idea of convincing the ``big, bad'' Americans that the Atlantic region was different and deserved different treatment, and you pulled it off.
Related to that, as the years have gone by, has the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports left you alone? I refer to the U.S. lumber industry that has been so relentless in attacking the Canadian industry. Does your deal stand, or are you feeling pressure from the U.S. despite the obvious justice of your case?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Senator Duffy, I thank you for that statement and question. The U.S. coalition is very secure in its convictions to ensure what they call ``fair, market-based trading practices.'' There are a number of obligations to Atlantic Canada that have applied. Some, we have willingly suggested. For example, we can never export more than we produce. That completely closes the door of any possible circumvention and we maintain that obligation. Others are maintaining our market-based forest practices and, given the high volume of private land, we have done that.
When there are energetic announcements in provinces that may lead a reader to believe there is a potential for subsidy, they respond and they expect an answer. We provide that information. We believe that an open and transparent approach is the best method of maintaining the relationship we have established. We got to where we are by putting the information on the table and sticking to the facts.
The quick answer is they never completely leave us alone. They always respond well to the facts and we continue to respect the premise of basing trade in softwood lumber on a market-based system.
Senator Duffy: That is good to hear, and it is good to hear you are on the job because clearly it requires continued vigilance.
We have heard a lot about education versus legislation. Other witnesses we have heard here, both from the concrete and steel industries, have talked about the efforts they make in universities and in continuing scientific seminars to ensure that engineers, architects and so on are aware of the new developments in the technology related to their products. I do not know if you have had a chance to read all of their testimony.
We heard from the Canadian Wood Council, and frankly, they seemed a bit lame to me. I understand the industry is under financial pressure, but it seems to me that a massive public education campaign is in order. Such a campaign would inform the public of how important the forest industry is to Canada, how flexible it is and how innovative you can be with it is needed. It could point out that builders could use wood instead of depending on other products. Is the Canadian Wood Council in the midst of perhaps taking some of this to heart?
I look at Sunday morning American TV. Various industry groups are buying ads on the current affairs shows in order to educate and influence legislators. We see none of that here. I understand the financial pressures, but it seems to me that education of the general population must come into play. You cannot just rely on the government to pass a rule and nirvana will be here.
Ms. Blenkhorn: Once again, I completely agree with you. It is not within my purview to make excuses for what the Canadian Wood Council has or has not done. I will point out that there is a roadmap in place, which identifies the deficiencies. Part of it is lack of leadership because there has been a void; we have not had a president there for a couple of years for a number of reasons, some of which has been identified.
The roadmap identifies what I have put forward, and I think you will see a totally different face on the Canadian Wood Council as we go forward. It will not be just the elected representatives and the members of the government that form our democratic society, the industry will demand it.
Senator Mercer: I want to switch to your topic of forest health. You talked about ongoing research. Could you perhaps tell us where that research is ongoing, how much money has been allocated for that research and where the money came from?
Ms. Blenkhorn: I do not have an exact dollar value. I believe it was in the area of $1.3 million. It was a shared responsibility between the Province of Nova Scotia and, specifically, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which operates under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and the Canadian Forest Service.
It is a three-year program that expires this year. We have made collective efforts to identify additional research needs. We are only part way through the process, whether it is biological controls or a number of things.
I do not have any indication of whether it will be extended and, if so, whether it will be extended as a program envelope. Again, one of the problems in extending it and finding the program envelope exists with the legislation itself which talks about the ability of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to fund things that are listed as ``emergencies.'' It is hard to qualify under the parameters of moving from eradication in an emergency to a ``slow the spread'' management plan.
I have a meeting later this afternoon with the vice-president of CFIA. I am the chair of the stakeholders in the Atlantic region and I try to bring these groups together. We are making progress. Every time we identify a way forward, we are confronted with things that are restrictive. The mandate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is to regulate. There is no evidence that a human assisted movement is furthering the brown spruce longhorn beetles, BSLBs. We have found one, two or three beetles in traps, but you cannot shut down an entire industry when that is your only tool. We need to develop other tools.
Senator Mercer: You did not tell me where the research is conducted.
Ms. Blenkhorn: The development of baits and pheromones is happening at the forest products lab in Fredericton, and some on the ground in Nova Scotia.
Senator Mercer: Senator Rivard referred to a bill before the House of Commons, Bill C-429. A member of the Bloc Québécois proposes that the government through PWGSC give preference to the concept of promoting wood and take into account the cost and greenhouse gas emissions.
Does your organization have an opinion on that bill? If it does pass the House of Commons and comes to the Senate, should we thinking positively about it.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I would not like to give the opinion of my organization until I have the benefit of counsel with my board. I believe there was a bill that went through a reading yesterday that provided funding to the Province of Quebec, specifically. I think $2.8 million was allocated to deal with carbon and promote that aspect. When I look at that, we need some dollars to do similar programs in Atlantic Canada.
Senator Eaton: In promoting, regulating or educating a wood first concept, have we begun to produce the value- added wood products we need in building six storey buildings?
Ms. Blenkhorn: We have. One of the changes in vision with the Maritimes is that the bureau's scope of influence should not be restricted to primary products but be extended to secondary manufacturing and its promotion. I used the phenomenal wood wave technology, which takes commodity production and adds value to it through the engineering design without just adding cost to production.
There is no opportunity that will go unturned as we look to the future.
Senator Eaton: We have heard about products like cross-laminated lumber and glulam. We heard from one Quebec operator who takes the ends of very small trees and makes a value-added wood product. Is that happening in the Maritimes? Are there people producing those things, or are we importing them? If I wanted to build a six storey building in Fredericton tomorrow, could I do it?
Ms. Blenkhorn: You would not do it out of LVL because it is not being produced anywhere in Canada. If you wanted to build a six storey building in Fredericton, you could do it with locally produced materials supplemented and enhanced by partnerships with the steel and concrete industry.
Senator Eaton: We do not have the sophisticated wood products right now, do we?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Not LVL or some of those other things. We do not do have laminated timbers in Atlantic Canada yet.
Senator Eaton: Can you give me a time frame when that might occur?
Ms. Blenkhorn: There have been a number of better utilization projects which have taken place in Atlantic Canada, but they are not necessarily complete. They add value. However, they may be in the form of wood pellets. Biomasses are producing more efficient energy by using residuals. They are not necessarily at functional changes and sophisticated products like LVL, but they are being looked at.
Right now, we are focusing on the technology. I would love to see Atlantic Canada be an assembly area to supply any place in Canada the components for the wood wave roof because, in my view, that is a huge opportunity for us.
Senator Eaton: Do the forests in the Maritimes have specific wood? Is specific wood grown that is not grown in Quebec, Manitoba or British Columbia? Are they bigger and fatter trees?
Ms. Blenkhorn: They are not bigger and fatter.
Senator Eaton: There is no hardwood there, then?
Ms. Blenkhorn: There is some hardwood and there are hardwood stands. The forests are very diverse and they are very strong growing stock. They are very dense. It is based on our climate.
If you were to look at the species composition across the forest cover in Atlantic Canada, it is partially coniferous, such as spruce, pine and fir, which are produced elsewhere. It also has hardwood stands, cedar stands and white pine stands.
It is considered in Canada the Acadian forest range. There are various differences. However, marketing our products and carving out a niche based on the species that we grow is not an opportunity.
Senator Eaton: Is there a push to grow more hardwood trees? Would that be considered non-competitive with the warmer U.S. climate and the trees grown in Brazil?
Ms. Blenkhorn: That is not my area of expertise. I am more in softwood. There is a push to grow higher-quality hardwood so that its uses expand from firewood to manufactured and other uses.
Senator Robichaud: I am concerned about the health of the forest. A few weeks ago, I cut down some trees. They were standing but they were dead, due to the bark beetle. We call it ``violon'' or mélèze'' and some people call it the red spruce beetle. I do not know if you know the species. It is spreading. There are quite a few dead trees in the area. Is there a chance that the local beetle could crossbreed with the imported beetle and cause even more damage?
Ms. Blenkhorn: They tell me that there is. This is why a make a plea for research that is not just based on emergency. We do not know whether it can crossbreed or whether we will end up with a super strain. One of the points we have made as stakeholders is that we know we have some tree health issues to deal with native species, like the spruce bark beetle. Whatever opportunities we may deploy that deal with forest health for indigenous species, if, at the same time, it treats forest health for native species, have we not emerged victorious and is it not a better forest health in Canada?
Senator Plett: I want to echo what Senator Rivard said. Around this table, we all agree we have an issue that needs to be dealt with. I think the only difference is in how we get there.
You suggested that government helps other industries. You are absolutely right. We are the Agricultural and Forestry Committee and we have helped the agricultural part of that for years. Therefore, I am certainly supportive.
During your presentation, while speaking about one of your slides, possibly the one on hospitals, you said something about the healing properties of wood. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Ms. Blenkhorn: A better person to speak to that would be Marianne Berube, who heads up the Wood WORKS! program in Northern Ontario.
Research projects and some anecdotal evidence suggest that patients hospitalized in an area built out of wood because of its aesthetic beauty and comforting properties heal better and are more comfortable than in a sanitary type of environment of concrete brick walls. As a consequence, a number of hospitals in Ontario have employed an additional amount of wood for just that reason. I can have that information sent to you. I do not have it on hand, but I do have it in my office.
Senator Plett: Thank you. It would be good if you would send that information to us. You mentioned the aesthetics of wood. I am wondering whether some nice murals painted on a steel wall would have the same effect.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I do not think that would be considered quite as comforting.
Senator Plett: Fair enough. You also talked about sawmills. I am not sure what year that was.
Ms. Blenkhorn: It was 2006.
Senator Plett: So many have disappeared. You also mentioned in your presentation that production had gone down. Is there a direct correlation between sawmills that have closed and production decreases? When we were in New Brunswick, we were in one of the Irving sawmills, and I saw the amount of wood they put through that sawmill in the short period of time that we were there. I am assuming that, as they have in the farming industry and other industries, the forest industry has become more efficient. We watched them cut the trees and strip them with the big machines. Clearly, sawmills would close down simply because we are much more efficient. Is there a direct correlation between loss of production and sawmill closures?
Ms. Blenkhorn: There is, but the correlation is not restricted to the closure of sawmills. Sawmills are not necessarily closing because bigger sawmills are more efficient. Smaller sawmills have typically supplied the agricultural trade; that has been their niche market, and they have served the local market more than the export market. Even the larger mills have curtailed their volume. That is where the correlation comes.
If you are operating a high-producing Irving facility that gets more wood out of the available tree, chances are you are running one shift and two shifts in times of strong markets. You are still putting through the volume with your employees and technology. Curtailment does not mean slowing it down; it means curtailing the output by reducing shifts, which has a direct correlation to lost jobs.
Senator Plett: You mentioned how much of a decrease there was in the same period of time.
Ms. Blenkhorn: It was 70 per cent.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
Ms. Blenkhorn: There has been a corresponding loss of direct jobs. We believe it is in the area of 1,800 direct jobs, and indirectly that translates to about 6,000 plus. As a result, contractors do not get into the forests. Truckers are not moving material if the logs are not coming out. That is in addition to direct sawmill workers. It has had a major impact on employment.
Senator Plett: On a purely personal note, and I have no reason to believe that you know this figure exactly, how badly has Manitoba been affected?
Ms. Blenkhorn: I do not have the exact figure, but I know that your production declines are comparable to Atlantic Canada, because there are several areas I have worked with Manitoba over the period of time where there are similarities in operating procedures.
Senator Ogilvie: This has been an interesting discussion. As you well know from having watched the procedures, we are dealing with a study of the current state and future of Canada's forest sector. Many things affect that, and I will touch on one of them just to make it clear. You answered it correctly in response to Senator Eaton's question, but to be clear on the record, the issue of monitoring for invasive species is certainly not confined to the idea of monitoring raw lumber. Rather, as you correctly pointed out, it is largely in the packaging materials that come in to the country. This is part of a wider issue of invasive species entering the country.
Ms. Blenkhorn: That is right.
Senator Ogilvie: I would like to come to the issue of the forest industry itself. To be blunt, it is my clear impression that for much of our history, we have essentially been land-based hunter-gatherers. We can easily identify a forest. We go in with our saws, cut the trees down, haul them out, saw them into lumber and ship them around.
The world forest industry in many countries where they have had to go to this much earlier is looking at what is generally referred to in the industry as elite species. In Atlantic Canada, there have been efforts to identify the tallest spruce in the forest and to harvest the cones and to comb through that.
Scandinavia, for a relatively small land mass, is highly competitive with us in world markets. They have been looking at elite species based on scientific development. The irony is that much of the scientific research on which they base their new elite species is Canadian based research out of the Saskatchewan NRC biotech lab. The Canadian researchers were unable to interest Canadian forest producers in that technology.
I have great difficulty in understanding why some of the biggest, most successful industries in this country have not invested more in looking down the road to the elite species. These can include not only those with fibres that are aligned better for specific markets, but a species that may be resistant to certain natural predators and so on, as well as the investigation into the use of wood in new formulations that meet either elite furniture production through to the ideas that Senator Eaton mentioned.
As we move forward in making recommendations, is it not reasonable that these very large forest operations should be significant partners in Canada with regard to investments in the research that is needed to move forward? I am not referring to the small mill operators but to the very large forest operations that dominate much of our sector.
Ms. Blenkhorn: I appreciate your comments. First, I am not an expert, although I know a bit about elite species. A few things come to mind.
Should the forest industry invest? It does invest. The forest industry is probably one of the most regulated industries in Canada. Our regulations can be found in the departments of Environment, Fisheries and Agriculture and Agri-Food. Our forest sector and the ability to operate within certain parameters are probably more ridiculed than any sector in Canada — biodiversity versus monoculture, elite species versus natural regeneration, all of those things. In each step of the way, the forest industry, in my opinion, has made the necessary investments to advance its ability to be both productive and accepted by the public.
Senator Ogilvie, I know you are from Nova Scotia, and you will know that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec started planting Norway spruce, which was an elite species from Europe. They did so because its fibres were very long and it was considered to be a preferred species for pulp and paper production. As that species has matured and is not finding its way into pulp and paper, the forest industry needs to invest in getting appropriate design values so it can be used in the construction industry in Canada.
Each species has different design properties and those properties are specified in the various grading rules. Efforts directed at obtaining acceptance for those design properties in the various building codes at home and abroad — and moving things along so that the industry in the province which has the species can benefit — are most often funded by industry.
The Chair: Thank you. In closing, I would like to speak, if honourable senators would permit me. Ms. Blenkhorn, you have made a few statements about steel, concrete and wood working in harmony; the objective is to find new hybrid products. With your experience, do you want to add to that? When we talk about harmony, how can this committee be a partner with the steel, concrete and wood industries to enhance further cooperation?
Ms. Blenkhorn: Rather than becoming protectionist and maintaining existing market share, we need to look at opportunities to grow our ability to penetrate by working in partnership. I do not have all the answers, Senator Mockler. It is something I would like to have more time for and give more thought to in order to develop a roadmap.
I know that if we respect each other's position and if we encourage industries to understand complementary building philosophies, we can benefit, rather than having two different promotional programs. In that way, there are new opportunities that should benefit us all. Concrete basements usually support wooden structures.
The Chair: You referred to research and development. Is there enough research and development in Canada or should we enhance research and development in the hardwood side of the industry?
Ms. Blenkhorn: No pun intended, but I think we probably need to take a ``hard look'' at what we are doing for hardwood. It is an underutilized species. Most of the high volume and high grade material has been imported from the United States. At least in Atlantic Canada where we have hardwood strands, typically, our own hardwood has gone into the production of firewood, to a large degree. It is an underutilized species that needs to be looked at for new opportunities.
The Chair: When honourable senators were in New Brunswick, they did plant trees. There is no doubt your presentation this morning has been very enriching and has enlightened the mandate of our committee. There is no doubt that, with your experience, you have seen what we can call the Rs of forestry: Revitalization, renewing our commitment and reinventing and helping in the emerging markets of tomorrow.
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for being a witness today.
(The committee adjourned.)