44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 28, 2022 11:00AM
moved that Bill S-222, An Act to amend the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act (use of wood), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am happy and proud to rise in the House this morning to begin debate on a bill from the other place, Bill S-222. This is a small but mighty bill that would create beautiful, safe federal buildings, support our forestry sector during difficult times, spur innovation in the cement and steel industries and help us reach our climate targets.
What would this bill do? It simply states that when building federal infrastructure, the Minister of Public Works “shall consider any potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and any other environmental benefits and may allow the use of wood or any other thing — including a material, product or sustainable resource — that achieves such benefits.”
I mentioned the bill came from the Senate, but, in fact, this bill started its life in the House of Commons, first as a Bloc bill more than a decade ago. I took up the bill in the 42nd Parliament where, as Bill C-354, it passed in the House of Commons, but died in the Senate when that Parliament ended.
I would like to take a moment to thank my friend, Senator Diane Griffin. Senator Griffin guided the bill through the Senate in 2018 and 2019 and when the bill stalled there, through no fault of her own, she reintroduced the bill in the 43rd Parliament. As many here remember, that Parliament ended prematurely due to an election, so Senator Griffin introduced it once again last year in this Parliament. It is through her persistence that we are seeing it again.
Senator Griffin retired last spring, so she passed the torch to Senator Jim Quinn, who saw it through its passage in the Senate earlier this fall.
The initial form of the bill over a decade ago was a direct ask of the minister to consider wood in the construction of federal infrastructure. It was modelled on the Charte du bois in Quebec and the wood-first bill in British Columbia. It was designed then to ensure that the federal government actually considered wood when building large infrastructure. Until recently, the construction industry had been totally geared to cement and steel when doing that.
My version of the bill was amended in committee to remove the overt preference for wood and replace that with preference for materials that had environmental benefits, in particular regarding the greenhouse gas footprints of the building materials. This amendment allayed a couple of concerns around the trade implications of potentially favouring one sector over another and also recognized the emerging work on making concrete and steel more environmentally friendly. I will speak more on that later.
I was initially inspired to take up this bill in 2016 because of a company in my riding, in my home town of Penticton. That company is Structurlam, and it has been at the leading edge of mass timber engineered wood construction in North America.
While Structurlam leads that sector, it still faces some of the hurdles that confront all innovative companies. It needs help to scale-up its production, and the easiest way for a government to help a company in that situation is to provide business through government procurement. That is one of the core benefits of this bill. It would help Canadian companies scale-up to maintain our dominant position in the engineered wood sector in North America.
Forest products, with their sequestered carbon, are obvious candidates for decisions under this policy. If we can use more wood in government infrastructure and grow the mass timber market in Canada, it will obviously benefit the forest sector overall.
These are benefits to a forest industry beset by challenges on all sides. Beetle infestations, catastrophic wildfires and a long history of harvests have all reduced access to fibre. To top it off, the softwood lumber dispute has brought illegal tariffs from our biggest trading partner, the United States.
Reduced fibre access means we have to get more jobs and more money for every log we cut, and that is what mass timber provides.
To make glulam beams or cross-laminated timber panels, mass timber plants use lumber sourced from local mills. That gives those mills a new domestic market for their products and it reduces their reliance on the United States. On top of that, we can sell those mass timber products to the United States tariff-free, so it is a win-win.
Just to reiterate, the bill and a rejuvenated domestic market for lumber would not mean increased forest harvest, as that is limited by other factors, but it will mean getting more value added out of the trees we do cut. There are benefits to using mass timber, benefits for the construction industry and benefits for the users of that infrastructure.
First, I will mention the construction process itself. Engineered wood is produced indoors in plant facilities. The building can be literally constructed indoors with no weather delays or complications, while the site is being prepared for construction. Then the building components can be put together quickly and delivered to the site exactly when needed.
Brock Commons, an 18-storey residence complex at the University of British Columbia, the tallest wood building in the world, was built in 57 days, two storeys per week. It is now home to over 400 UBC students. Because the component parts are built indoors, they can be constructed to very fine tolerances, within millimetres, and that means a lot when one is constructing the buildings of the future that will have to be built to passive energy specifications.
The buildings constructed in this way are beautiful. The exposed wood components are like furniture. Structurlam has an entire finishing plant devoted to smoothing and treating every exposed beam and wall panel as if it were a piece of massive furniture.
It is not surprising many of the early examples of mass timber construction were civic buildings meant to look good as well as be functional, buildings such as the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Olympic speed skating oval in Richmond, B.C. and the Rocky Ridge recreation centre in Calgary. The Rocky Ridge facility has over 2,000 glulam beams forming its huge roof, and no two are the same.
I would like to also mention that Canada leads the way in engineered wood construction in North America. Structurlam has projects all across the continent and has recently opened up a branch plant in Arkansas. Nordic Structures in Chibougamau, Quebec was another pioneer of this technology.
Another major mass timber plant has recently opened in my riding just outside Castlegar. It was opened up by Kalesnikoff Lumber. I would like to give a shout-out to Ken Kalesnikoff and his son Chris and daughter Krystle for making this major investment that will pay off for the future of the West Kootenay and the forest sector in British Columbia.
One issue that often comes up when talking about tall wood buildings is fire safety. I hear from firefighters who just simply do not like the concept of wood buildings of any size. We heard testimony of that nature in both House of Commons and Senate committees. However, I need to reiterate that large infrastructure projects under this legislation would be constructed with mass timber. Firefighters I talked to are concerned about buildings constructed with traditional wood frame construction such as two-by-fours and two-by-sixes.
Mass timber is another thing entirely. When we have glulam beams a metre thick or cross laminated timber panels nine inches thick, those materials react to open flame in a completely different way. They simply slowly char instead of bursting into flame. Think of trying to light a log on fire with a match.
The National Research Council has conducted fire safety trials with mass timber and has found it is just as safe, or safer, than traditional concrete or steel construction.
More detailed studies are under way, including those at the University of British Columbia with Felix Wiesner. Dr. Wiesner has found, perhaps not surprisingly, that thicker components, say panels made with five layers of lumber versus those made with three layers, burn more slowly and that the type of adhesive that binds those layers also has an impact.
Suffice it to say, large buildings made with mass timber provide both occupants and firefighters ample time to exit the building in case of a fire and, as I said earlier, are just as safe or safer than traditionally designed buildings.
I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the other materials that might compete successfully in the government's analysis of environmental benefit. We have been hearing a lot about green steel production, and there are new cement products that sequester carbon dioxide to reduce some of that material's carbon footprint.
When I first put forward this bill, I heard concerns from the cement industry that the direct mention of wood might be unfair to the cement sector, which has made impressive advances in sustainability over the past few years. Those concerns were largely met by the amendments that were made in the committee in the 42nd Parliament and carried through to this version of the bill. I just talked to the cement industry last week, and it is supportive. It pointed out it is working with the federal government to provide data for life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas footprints of building materials.
These analyses will be critical to the use of the legislation before us, as it will provide decision-makers with all the details they need. We will need similar full life-cycle data for steel and wood products, of course.
In recent conversations I have had with members of all parties around Bill S-222, I am heartened by the support I am hearing. Members of all parties know that this is the right way forward; that this bill will set us in the right direction when it comes to meeting our climate targets; that this bill will support the forest industry, a sector that has been beset with challenges from all sides in recent years; and that this bill will not discriminate against other building material sectors, such as cement and steel, that are working hard to innovate new solutions to make their products truly sustainable.
I hope that every member here will support Bill S-222 at second reading. I look forward to discussing it at committee to ensure that it will truly have the beneficial impacts that it promises. With this legislation in place, we can literally build a better Canada.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend from South Okanagan—West Kootenay for his sponsorship of the bill, for his advocacy and for his hard work on this. I really appreciate it. I think he has done a yeoman's job on this file, including through his meetings with firefighters and others. I thank him. I think this is a very good bill, and I am pleased to speak about how we can make our government operations greener through smart investments in public infrastructure.
The efforts of this government to be more sustainable in how it operates, what it buys and what it builds are more important than ever right now. After a summer of unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, floods and storm surges around the world and right here at home, it is well past time to seriously accelerate our action against greenhouse gas emissions.
This past March, the government introduced its 2030 emissions reduction plan. This plan is our path to meeting our target under the Paris Agreement to get to net-zero emissions by 2050. The plan maps out how we will reduce our emissions from 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, with clear milestones. It is consistent with the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
In Canada, we must lead the way. Indeed, as the Prime Minister has said, “climate change is an existential threat. Building a cleaner, greener future will require a sustained and collaborative effort from all of us.” He has mandated his ministers to seek opportunities within their portfolio to “support our whole-of-government effort to reduce emissions, create clean jobs and address the climate-related challenges communities are already facing.”
As we work toward solutions to ease and mitigate the environmental damage, we are positioning ourselves to bring about real reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
Bill S‑222 will encourage the government to use wood, a sustainable, renewable material, in the construction and renovation of federal buildings and infrastructure projects.
One department is particularly well positioned to help the government achieve its greening government strategy objectives. That department is Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC. As the government's primary procurement body and manager of its real property, the department can prioritize purchasing and using materials that reduce our carbon footprint.
Today I would like to talk to you about how PSPC can play a unique and important role in reducing our GHG emissions and how wood products are essential to achieving that.
I would like to start with a brief explanation of what PSPC does. First, the department is the government's central purchasing agency, responsible for about 24 billion dollars' worth of procurement activity annually on behalf of most government departments and agencies. Second, PSPC is also the property manager for a vast portfolio of buildings it owns or rents across the country. In addition to office buildings, that portfolio includes heritage properties, such as the parliamentary precinct, and numerous bridges, wharves and dams across the country.
These two sectors offer a significant opportunity to achieve greener outcomes, and advance the goals of sustainable development and a carbon neutral portfolio for Canada.
By prioritizing green procurement, PSPC can help protect the environment in several different ways. Beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions from government operations, green procurement will also have the same effect on our supply chains. Moreover, it cuts down on the use of hazardous and toxic substances, pollution and plastic waste. It also supports the Canadian economy by creating new markets for innovative products and services. In this context, green procurement includes assessing the life cycles of goods that are purchased, and adopting clean technologies and green products and services.
The government’s policy on green procurement also stipulates the criteria for sustainable goods and services to guide procurement operations. These criteria require potential suppliers to demonstrate that their products can reduce emissions, are sustainable or have other environmental benefits.
Given that it purchases nearly $24 billion on behalf of the majority of departments and agencies, PSPC has substantial leverage to create markets for sustainable goods. This can act like a virtuous circle and inspire other manufacturers and businesses to up their game and offer greener alternatives to the greater consumer market, which will benefit all of us.
The greening government strategy also commits the government to maintaining a plan to reach net zero for its real property portfolio by 2050. That plan also has to show that its buildings and infrastructure are resilient to climate change and cost-effective. For example, PSPC is transforming the iconic Centre Block from one of the highest-emitting PSPC assets to a near net-zero carbon facility. It is also using low-carbon construction materials where possible in the new Parliament Welcome Centre. In addition, during the rehabilitation of West Block—
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- Nov/28/22 2:30:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada is the only country in the developed world to increase the carbon tax during affordability crisis. Even Japan got with the program and cancelled its plan to increase the carbon tax.
The Liberals keep raising the tax, yet emissions keep going up, and they have not hit a single emission reduction target. Even the Governor of the Bank of Canada said if the government axed the carbon tax, the Liberal inflation would be reduced.
Why would the Liberals not stop forcing their failed carbon tax scheme on Canadians?
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- Nov/28/22 2:32:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives never met an environmental program that they did not want to cut.
I mentioned on the last day that they gutted our environmental laws, and they cut $350 million from the climate action budget. For 10 long years, the Conservatives did absolutely nothing on climate change.
We are on track to meet our emissions target. We are doing something about climate change. We are building the economy of tomorrow.
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- Nov/28/22 2:33:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I remind the Liberal government that it is in government. It needs to present a plan. The government lacks credibility when it has not met a single climate target.
A tax on the backs of average Canadians does nothing to drive down emissions. It drives up poverty. More Canadians are relying on food banks than ever before. The food banks fear that they are going to run out of food. The carbon tax is not an environmental plan. It is a tax plan.
Will the government cancel its cruel carbon tax on gas, groceries and home heating?
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- Nov/28/22 2:34:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are in government, and we are in government in part because we have a credible plan on climate. I think Canadians expect His Majesty's official opposition to have a climate plan, which it clearly does not.
Affordability today is critically important, but so is affordability tomorrow. We cannot leave the kinds of costs to our children that we will if we do not address climate change. The Climate Institute estimates $100 billion a year by 2050 if we do not act to mitigate carbon emissions. We are going to do so in a manner that will promote economic opportunity and address climate change.
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- Nov/28/22 2:58:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would point out that any proposal for production within the areas in question would first and foremost be subject to the Impact Assessment Act, would have to fit within the framework of our climate plan and would have to offer the best emissions performance, including net-zero emissions by 2050.
Biodiversity is very important to the Government of Canada and to Canadians across the country.
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- Nov/28/22 6:40:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise to take up a point that I debated in this place when we first had the news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the spring of this year, that we have less time than we thought in responding to the urgency of the science. The panel reported that, if we did not reduce our emissions rapidly, we would lose any chance of holding to 1.5ºC global average temperature increase, and that we had to stay below 2ºC.
At that point, in my question to the government members, I quoted the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres. He, when speaking recently of the promises made in Paris at COP21 in 2015 versus the delivery on climate action by governments around the world, said that some governments are promising to reduce emissions, but emissions are increasing. He said, “Simply put, they are lying.” I asked the hon. government members, when the UN Secretary General was speaking of governments that were doing one thing and saying another, whom did our government think António Guterres was referencing.
Since the time of my question, it has been clear that the government has provided additional support to the expansion of fossil fuel development. Now we have a very clear difference here, and I want to set out the problem because I want to be fair to all concerned. The government of the current Liberal minority, supported by the NDP in their confidence-supply agreement, appears to believe, or at least wants Canadians to believe, that reaching net zero by 2050 is a target that will ensure we can hold our increase in global average temperature to 1.5ºC, or at least as far below 2ºC as possible.
The Liberals put forward this notion, and they emphasized it again in the climate accountability act that was passed in the last Parliament, even though it is not true. It is not true that achieving net zero by 2050 assures us of a livable world. In fact, the science in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's sixth assessment report makes it very clear that the 2050 target of net zero is irrelevant if emissions continue to rise in the near term. In other words, again from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 2050 target without emissions must peak globally and begin to fall dramatically at the latest before 2025 or any hope of 1.5ºC or 2ºC is gone.
A 2ºC world is unthinkable, yet we are on track to it. Again quoting António Guterres of the United Nations, when COP27 opened earlier this month in Sharm el-Sheikh, he said that the world is “on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”
Therefore, again, what government does the Canadian government believe the UN is referencing when it says that some governments are promising and doing the opposite? He said, “Simply put, they are lying.” As well, to whom does the government think it is referring to when it says “foot on the accelerator”, when we have a government that is insisting on building pipelines, expanding production and drilling off Newfoundland? Whom is the United Nations referencing?
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- Nov/28/22 6:44:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend and colleague for the question.
I cannot speak for the Secretary-General nor speculate about which leader he is referring to. However, what appears to be underlying his statement is a deep concern with the state of global emissions despite several decades of international co-operation and political commitments. I share this deep concern and so does our government.
With less than a decade left to 2030, and with countries around the world quickly moving to a cleaner economy, Canada's 2030 target of 40% to 45% below 2005 levels is ambitious, necessary and achievable, reflecting both the scale of the climate crisis and the economic opportunity that climate action presents. This target reflects Canada's highest possible ambition in light of its current national circumstances.
Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan is a road map that goes sector by sector, outlines the measures and strategies for Canada to reach this target and lays the foundations for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. This plan includes $9.1 billion in new investments and a suite of new measures to help mobilize Canada towards a truly sustainable economy and becoming a leading competitor in the global transition to cleaner industries and technologies. This plan also builds on the strong foundation set by the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change and the strengthened climate plan. As well, since 2015, the government has delivered $100 billion in investments for climate action.
These efforts are working. Thanks to the actions of millions of Canadians, we have been able to halt our once-upward trend of emissions and bend it downward. This road map will build on this progress and chart the course to lowering emissions by 40% below 2005 levels.
Of course, ambitious action by Canada alone is not enough. Climate change is a global crisis that requires global solutions. Under the Paris Agreement, all have adopted national emissions targets. Like Canada, many have recently come forward with even stronger commitments. Still, there is much more to be done at the global level, and Canada will continue to play a key role and strongly advocate that all countries, particularly members of the G20, do their part to achieve the 1.5°C temperature goal.
We need more countries to adopt stronger targets and formal commitments to achieve net-zero emissions. We need to see greater public and private investment in low-carbon solutions. We need to see an even more deliberate and rapid move away from unabated coal. As we move forward in driving down Canada's own emissions, we will continue to engage with international partners from all over the world and advocate for increased ambition.
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- Nov/28/22 6:49:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just to repeat, the 2030 emissions reduction plan provides a credible pathway to the lower range of our target of 40% below 2005 levels. Enhanced climate ambition from provinces, territories, municipalities, industry and the financial sector, as well as the acceleration of clean technology and innovation, and the deployment of that technology, will drive further reductions. These collective efforts will give Canada the accelerated momentum that is needed to achieve the upper bound of Canada's emissions reduction target and put us on track to net-zero emissions by 2050.
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