- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
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Mr. Speaker, I would really like to thank the member for the opportunity to comment on that. It is very important that Canadian legislators go to Washington, and anywhere in the United States, to put forward our case on softwood lumber. In their laws, the Americans have the right for the wood industry to put forward complaints about how international trade occurs, but there is no mechanism, for instance, for American home builders to be third parties to those complaints in the courts of the United States. We put forward that case. We spoke to American home builders. We spoke to legislators.
It is unfortunate that it seems the way the American timber industry is handling this is that it knows that, if it brings forward complaints, it will always lose to Canada before tribunals and courts. However, in the intervening years that those tribunals take, we lose mills. It almost seems that this is the aim of the United States, and that is precisely the case I brought up when speaking to the U.S. trade representative and other legislators in Washington.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour, once again, to rise to speak to this small but mighty bill, Bill S-222. It would require the minister of public works and government services to consider the environmental benefits of building materials when building federal infrastructure.
This bill has come a long way to get to this point. Today, we begin third reading with a real chance of seeing this bill become law in the coming days. I am very encouraged by the unanimous support that Bill S-222 has received here in this House at second reading and in committee, where it was passed and returned here without amendment.
I would like to thank retired senator Diane Griffin for sponsoring this bill in the other place in this Parliament. It began its life as my private member's bill, Bill C-354, in the 42nd Parliament. It passed through the House in that Parliament but died an unfortunate and unnecessary death in the Senate. It was an innocent bystander of some other political manoeuvring. I will mention as well that an earlier version of this bill, one more specifically targeted at wood alone, was tabled by Gérard Asselin, a member of the Bloc Québécois, in 2010 as Bill C-429.
It has been a long and tortuous path to get to this place here today. I am really looking forward to seeing this bill become law at last.
One thing I have not mentioned in my previous speeches on this bill is the role that Natural Resources Canada officials played in helping move this bill forward in the 42nd Parliament. I want to mention in particular the efforts by Sandra Schwartz, who helped amend the bill and focus it on the environmental benefits of building materials.
I would like to concentrate my comments today on the testimony we heard at committee on Bill S-222.
One of the witnesses in the hearings was from the Quebec Forest Industry Council. They pointed out three ways that forest products can help decarbonize construction. The most obvious of these is the fact that long-lasting wood products store carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere as the trees were growing.
The second is that the new trees that replace the trees that were harvested continue to store carbon throughout their lives. This is a more complicated calculation that must take into account the full life-cycle analysis of harvest and production. The QFIC has asked that such life-cycle analyses be developed by the federal government. It is my understanding that those analyses are being developed. They have been developed for other building products but are being developed for wood products.
The third is the fact that forest products can help decarbonize construction because there is such a huge potential for growth in the use of these products. Only 5% of large buildings use wood as a primary component, so increasing that percentage would have an increasing beneficial effect.
Both the International Association of Fire Fighters and the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs testified as well before committee. Firefighters are naturally concerned about the safety aspects of building construction in Canada, as they are the ones who literally put their lives on the line to fight fires within these buildings.
As building codes change to include new advances in mass timber construction, firefighters ask that their safety be an added objective in those new codes. I can add here the assurance from other committee testimony that mass timber construction has been shown to be as safe as or safer than standard concrete and steel structures after testing by the National Research Council and other agencies. Government officials pointed out that the procedures asked for by the bill are generally in place in government policy or are in the process of implementation, including the life-cycle analysis of environmental impacts of various building materials.
There is a real sense of urgency in the forest industry for any policy changes that would help that sector produce more jobs and create more wealth within our rural communities, all in the face of a reduced harvest. This bill would do that. By increasing the government procurement of mass timber products, it would increase the domestic markets for our lumber and create new jobs for turning that lumber into long-lasting mass timber beams and panels. We lead the North American mass timber industry, but it is still a small sector and needs careful attention or we will lose that lead very quickly.
Structurelam, the pioneer company in mass timber in North America, based in my hometown of Penticton, has recently been forced to restructure and sell its assets because of an unfortunate contract disagreement with Walmart. Hopefully, it will remain in Canada and regain its strength as the leading proponent of engineered wood on the continent. However, its story is a reminder that the sector is in a vulnerable position, still open to growing pains. A bill promoting government procurement could provide significant benefits at a critical juncture in the growth of the industry.
I spent much of last week in Washington, D.C., talking to American legislators about international trade between Canada and the United States. One of the big issues there obviously is the softwood lumber disagreement. The wonderful thing about mass timber is that not only is it beautiful and safe and not only does it create new jobs, but it can be exported to the United States without facing the illegal tariffs we have under softwood lumber. This bill would help create domestic markets so our mills that create two-by-fours and two-by-sixes will have more domestic markets, allowing them to grow and keep going in the face of this dispute, which has really harmed mills across the country.
I have to remind everyone that, while I and others have concentrated on wood products in this debate, the bill is open to any materials that provide environmental benefits. I met repeatedly with the cement industry and heard of its efforts to decarbonize the concrete that makes up so much of our infrastructure today. The cement industry believes it can be competitive with forest products in many cases in these full life-cycle analyses on environmental benefits. I commend those efforts and would simply say that this is what I hope to accomplish with this bill.
Buildings contribute up to 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and we must take all steps to reduce those emissions. Whether those reductions are achieved through the use of mass timber, new decarbonized concrete products or other sustainable products is not important. What is important is that we act quickly to change the way we construct buildings as part of our existential efforts to fight climate change.
Bill S-222 would be a step in that direction. I hope that today we will see continued support so that this bill can become law at last and create beautiful, safe and environmentally friendly buildings across this country, and support industry and mills across this country.
After unanimous support at second reading and at committee, we have the opportunity today to end debate and see this bill become law within a day or two. I hope that all other parties will allow debate to collapse so we can get to a vote quickly. I do not know why any party would want to prolong this process.
I thank everyone here for their support of Bill S-222 and look forward to a short and positive debate.
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- Apr/20/23 5:36:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will say this.
The Canadian forest industry is in difficult times. It is a period of change. Companies and workers are adapting to a rapidly changing forestry landscape. These changes need the support of governments at all levels.
I have travelled to Washington, DC before to advocate for the Canadian forest industry and to get rid of these tariffs. I will be going back there again next month with the international trade committee. I do not know what is on the official agenda of that upcoming trip, but I know that I will be bringing up the softwood lumber issue whenever I can.
I hope that the government, including the Prime Minister and other appropriate ministers, would be doing this as well, in all their interactions with their American counterparts. Forest workers across Canada are expecting continuing action, and are growing impatient for positive news.
When will the billions in excess duties collected finally be returned to the Canadian forest industry? When will free trade in lumber finally return to North America?
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Mr. Speaker, this adjournment debate arises from a question I asked a few weeks ago before President Biden's visit. I mentioned that just days after the Prime Minister met with President Biden in 2021, the U.S. announced it was doubling the duties on softwood lumber and that workers in communities that rely on the Canadian forest industry were hoping for better this time.
My first question is whether the Prime Minister brought up softwood lumber with the President, and I ask that because I have heard conflicting news on this front. It seems that if the word softwood was mentioned in those meetings, it was just a passing thought and certainly not a priority at all. It should be one of the government's highest priorities when it comes to international trade.
I was in Prince George last week at the annual conference of the Council of Forest Industries, and the mood was rather sombre. The forest industry in British Columbia and across the country is facing very difficult times. Wildfires, beetle epidemics and years of old-growth harvest have reduced the amount of economically available timber. Low lumber prices have closed mills across Canada, including the Vaagen mill in the town of Midway in my riding. On top of that, we have illegal tariffs that have taken billions of dollars from the Canadian forest industry. It does not look like it will get better anytime soon.
While in Prince George, I talked to the Canadian negotiators from Global Affairs. I talked to industry representatives. They pointed out that the unfair anti-dumping fines levied by the Americans have the insidious property of becoming larger when lumber prices are low and smaller when prices are high. Canadian lumber exporters were surviving during the times of high prices last year and the year before, but now that prices are low, they are facing the double hit of prices that often do not even support the cost of production as well as high export tariffs being levied in the near future.
I will add that there is a way to ameliorate this situation while the illegal tariffs are in place. It is to provide supports to grow the mass timber sector so we can develop domestic markets as well as export wood products to the United States without having to pay softwood lumber tariffs.
That is just what my private member's bill, Bill S-222, would do. It would encourage the federal government to use mass timber and other building materials with low environmental impact while building federal infrastructure. Two operations in my riding, Structurlam in the South Okanagan and Kalesnikoff in West Kootenay, are leaders in the mass timber sector in North America, and we should support them and other value-added plants across the country so that when we are harvesting trees from a shrinking available cut, we are getting more money and more jobs from each and every tree.
Yes, there are ways we can support the Canadian forest industry, but the biggest win would be the elimination of the unfair and illegal tariffs the Americans have put on our exports to the U.S.A. We must keep up the pressure on the American government to get rid of these measures. We must continually make the case to the American people that these unfair tariffs benefit only a few wealthy American timber barons and hit the American public with significantly higher building costs.
Is the Canadian government putting sustained pressure on the Americans to fix this?
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- Dec/1/21 11:13:02 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the part that I glossed over at the end, because I was running out of time, is that we really have to look at a different way of managing our forests. For instance, in British Columbia, every fall we burn all the slash that is produced. All the wood that is not used is burned. It produces as much carbon in the atmosphere as all the cars in British Columbia put together. We could change forestry quite easily so that sector could help us meet our climate targets, but we could also value forests for other things. We could monetize the carbon sequestration. We have seen the floods in British Columbia—
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- Dec/1/21 11:11:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, it has been dragging on because it works for the United States. It works for this group of protectionist business people, especially those who own many mills. They have found out that this works. If they get Congress to put illegal and unfair tariffs on Canadian lumber, Canada will fight back.
Several years ago, we had a similar debate in the House. I remember counting how many times we had won and it was something like 24 battles in a row, but it takes time. In the early 2000s, as I said, while those court battles were dragging on in NAFTA panels and the WTO, many mills across the country, certainly in British Columbia, went out of business. I think that is what those American interests were looking for, so they are not afraid of trying it again.
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- Dec/1/21 11:09:07 p.m.
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Madam Chair, this is an important debate. The forestry industry in Canada is hugely important. We have heard of the forest workers who are affected. In British Columbia, we hear a lot about energy and oil workers losing their jobs in Alberta and Saskatchewan. British Columbia lost a similar number of those workers back in the early 2000s in one of the iterations of the softwood lumber dispute. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
As I say, this is an ongoing problem. The softwood lumber dispute is just one of the problems the forest industry faces now. For the last year, mills had been doing fine just because prices were ridiculously high, but those prices have come back to earth and now things are hurting again.
It is disappointing, but we have to ensure we put all our minds toward this. I really do think we need to have a long-term solution. In 1982, my kids were not even born and they now have kids of their own. We have to come up with a different way of looking at this.
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- Dec/1/21 11:03:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am happy to speak tonight on softwood lumber.
As people have been saying throughout the evening, this comes back and back again. If we look up the softwood lumber dispute on Wikipedia, it goes on and on, with “Lumber II”, “Lumber III” and “Lumber IV”. It is like world wars or Super Bowls. I think even Wikipedia has given up on where we are now, because it stops at “IV” and I think we are at “V” or “VI” by now.
It is an intractable problem, and I agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that it is driven by protectionism, not logic or fairness. The Americans know that we depend on them for our lumber market, and they know if they put enough barriers in place, put down these unfair tariffs, clog up the courts for years and years and stop putting people on the WTO appellate bodies so that system does not work, mills will go out of business before we can get a fair ruling.
I think what we have to do is find a new strategy that will gradually move us away from the United States. The United States depends on us, and I think at some point they will realize they are hurting. I have been to Washington and have talked to senators and congressmen about this, and some of them get it.
Our forests are changing. We have had devastating fires in British Columbia. We have had beetle pandemics. The weather is changing too. I just talked to my wife, and in my hometown of Penticton it was 22.5°C today. That is a new Canadian record for December. That is perfect pine beetle weather; they love that kind of winter weather. Who knows where we are going to end up next year with our forests?
I am not the first to say this and I will not be the last, but we have to find ways of driving more economic value out of every tree we cut down. We all know that we have cut down a lot of trees and we are running out of our old-growth forests. We have heard that time and again.
Whenever we cut down a tree, we have to get the maximum value out of it, and I think one thing we can do, as the member just mentioned, is use mass timber. Canada leads this technology in North America. We have Structurlam in my hometown of Penticton, Chantiers Chibougamau in Quebec and Kalesnikoff Lumber in Castlegar, on the other side of my riding. These are three world-leading plants that make mass timber.
We can have sawmills around Canada producing two-by-fours and two-by-sixes and selling them to mass timber plants to create building materials to build more of our buildings out of wood and build larger buildings out of wood. This is how the big buildings of the future will be built. As already mentioned, I have a private member's bill about using that sort of wood or any material that will help us in our climate action and bring down the greenhouse gas emissions in our buildings. That bill is in the Senate now, and I hope it will come back to us in the spring and receive a good welcome here.
We also have to do something that will increase our markets domestically. We tried to increase our markets in Asia, particularly in China, and that worked for a while. However, to put it mildly, I think that has hit a bit of a headwind. I do not know if we can go much further in China at the moment, but we have the opportunity to build a much larger domestic market that would take the pressure off our sawmills.
We could sell mass timber in the United States without tariffs. It does not qualify for the softwood lumber tariffs we are talking about. That is one solution we should be looking at. We would have to educate our architects, change our building codes and educate our builders, but we should really look to that solution to get more value out of our forests. We should also monetize our forests for means other than fibre: for the water they protect, for the flood protection they provide and for the carbon they sequester.
I will leave it there.
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- Dec/1/21 10:51:45 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I would like to thank my colleague from Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies for his speech. I was on the natural resources committee with him as well, like the other member who just spoke.
The member talked about the mills that have moved south. We now have big companies in British Columbia that own sawmills. They have more mills in the United States than they have in Canada. Does the member know of a trade legal way whereby we can take the tariffs that have already been charged to those companies and have the government return that funding to them in the form of loans, as a kind of down payment on what the government is promising about solving this problem?
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- Dec/1/21 10:28:56 p.m.
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Madam Chair, in response to a question, my colleague referenced why we need to use CUSMA, NAFTA and whatever mechanisms we can. She also said that CUSMA was negotiated in a normal way. Well, why was softwood lumber not included in it? To me it seems that this is such an intractable problem that logic and fairness have nothing to do with it.
What are we up against here and how are we going to get around this? We could have put it in CUSMA if logic and fairness had something to do with this dispute.
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- Dec/1/21 9:45:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to say that six years ago it was this member to whom I asked my first question in the House of Commons the first time I spoke, so it has come a bit full circle.
I would ask him this. To get away from this dependence on the United States, is there anything more we could be doing to expand our markets, both here and abroad, as well as to value or monetize our forests in ways other than just for fibre and two-by-fours?
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