HALIFAX, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2003
STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
1:00 P.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. John MacDonell
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to call the Standing Committee on Resources to order and I would like to welcome representation for Northern Lumber Limited, Mr. Allan Marchbank and Mr. Tom Taggart. I think Mr. Taggart is going to speak to other associated issues. The members of the committee certainly know the routine. We will go on a first-come, first-served basis for those who want to ask questions and try to ensure that anyone who wants to ask gets a chance, at least for the first round, and then we will start on a second round.
So without further ado, I would like to say welcome to both of these gentlemen and the members of the committee are telling me that before I steam ahead to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves. So I think we will start to my right with Mr. Sampson. It's my understanding that Mr. Gaudet, the MLA for Clare, will be through the door in a second. So, Mr. Sampson, if you would like to start with your introduction.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Without further ado, Mr. Marchbank, if you would like to start.
MR. ALLAN MARCHBANK: I would like to thank the committee for allowing us the privilege to present what we hope will be useful information today. We are not here to resurrect the dead but to provide information that will help keep the living healthy. It has been two and a half years since I first asked Mr. Langille to speak before this committee. Notwithstanding that, we are grateful for the privilege of being here today. I just want to make a small presentation about the company that I was associated with. The company no longer exists for reasons that I will present here.
1
Northern Lumber Limited was established in 1996 by a small group of businessmen in the Tatamagouche area. It was purchased by myself in 1998 with private funds. Northern Lumber was designed to process rough, green hardwood lumber into panel products for the home construction and furniture industry. The lumber was bought from several mills in Nova Scotia. It was then dried in two kilns that had a capacity of 25,000 board feet each. The drying process took about two weeks. The lumber was then planed and the defects were removed by ripping and chopping the boards into various pieces. The pieces were then sorted according to the specifications of the customer and edge-glued by applying glue to the edge of each board. After placing pieces in a clamp, they were allowed to cure for 24 hours and sanded and the finished product was placed on pallets and shipped to customers in the United States, Europe and Canada.
In order to process the lumber, Northern Lumber employed some 15 people year-round with an annual payroll of $300,000. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of people but I think it's about 2 per cent of the people in the service area of Tatamagouche. We originally purchased the mill anticipating the opening of a modern, new hardwood mill in Pictou County, with the understanding that the lumber from the mill would be available at market price to local value-added manufacturers. We hired a consultant, an industrial engineer, to improve production and efficiency. However, when the new mill at Foxbrook in Pictou County, owned by Savoie/Dickson started up, a major portion of the available logs were directed to this mill and the lumber produced was shipped to Savoie-owned added-value plants in New Brunswick. Not only was there no increase in the supply of lumber to increase production and jobs at Northern Lumber, but it also affected the log supply to our traditional suppliers so that we had less lumber available for processing. As a result, we were having difficulty supplying our regular customers on a timely basis.
We anticipated that we could solve this local supply problem by taking steps to secure a rough lumber supply outside of Nova Scotia. In order to do this, we hired a full-time person to locate and purchase lumber from New Brunswick, Quebec and New York. Of course, this added greatly to our operating costs but we thought it would be short term. In order to correct our supply problem in the long term, the manager of Northern Lumber requested a meeting with the owner of Savoie/ Dickson, Mr. Jean-Claude Savoie. During this meeting, our manager was told that Savoie/Dickson would not sell one stick of hard maple to Northern Lumber as they needed it for their production facilities in New Brunswick. Mr. Savoie did say, however, that they would be willing to sell other pieces that were surplus to their needs to us.
When we realized that we could not reach an agreement with Mr. Savoie, I personally contacted our local MLA, Mr. Bill Langille, as well as various other government officials, explaining our position but received no favourable response. We then tried to buy logs from various sources like Kimberly-Clark, Stora, MacTara, H.C. Haines and so on. We also placed ads in trade magazines, all with little success.
It was at this time that we consulted with our customers, telling them we could no longer guarantee delivery. We decided that in order to enable our customers to maintain their supply, we would turn our orders over to a New Brunswick company that could guarantee their needs. We then attempted, along with a local sawmill operator, to develop a market for a lower quality hardwood that required less processing and less need for a consistent supply. This plan, as well, fell through.
Without a consistent supply of wood, we could no longer continue to operate. The company ceased operations in the summer of 2001. Based on the information that I have currently and based on this report that's come out of the community college in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia Value-Added Wood Products Industry - a very good report, supports much of what I've said here. Based on the information that I have currently this situation still exists in Nova Scotia today.
Like I have said, there are many recommendations in this report here, which you people, I have sent parts of it, what I thought were pertinent parts. They have solutions that would help a great deal to maintain at least in a healthy fashion the existing plants in the province, if they can get a steady and secure supply of hardwood.
Now, there are many ways of doing that and Tom might have something to say about that. He's still trying to source hardwood in order to maintain his business.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Taggart.
MR. TOM TAGGART: I would like to thank everyone for the opportunity to come down and speak. My brother and I have a small value-added hardwood business in Debert. We buy logs and sell them, dry them, defect them and send the white, clear four-sided motor-ready blanks, I guess you would call them, to Europe and anything that's not clear, four sides, we send to a new flooring mill and plant in Cape Breton and have them milled and finished and brought back and then we sell factory direct at our shop.
One of the biggest struggles that we face on a daily basis is the supply of good raw material. I guess that's the point that I want to make. There are a lot of reasons for that and I am not laying it all at anybody's feet but 10 years ago, when we started thinking about trying to start this business, if you did a little research, you know that the government at that time called Nova Scotia hardwoods an underutilized species. I think likely as a result of that report, of that sort of thinking, I guess it likely attracted Savoie - which Allan spoke of - to Pictou County, because there is a lot of good quality hardwood down there. So they set up there. They certainly have had a negative effect on the smaller producers. But I am not here to say that it's all their fault. But I want to make the point, if I can, of the value of adding in Nova Scotia.
I'm sorry, I don't really have a presentation for everybody, but if somebody wants copies we can make them.
Yesterday, for example, in our operation, I pulled three pieces just out of the run and one of them is over on the table there. I pulled a board out, a one common board, and I'm really just doing this to illustrate the value of this hardwood to us here in Nova Scotia. I pulled one out which was wood graded a one common, it was a six-inch board, eight-feet long and it would cost me, if I had bought that board from a mill like B.A. Fraser or Savoie, or any number of hardwood mills around, $5.06. The wood that's on the table from that piece of flooring is what I cut out of it and the return on that was $9.16. One common is one of our harder grades to recover from.
The next board I pulled out was a two common, which is worth $700 per 1,000 if it is shipped as a raw product. Of that board, which was exactly the same size as that one when I started, I took $11.41 out of it. The next one was a piece of pallet wood, at 3.5-inches wide. The value was 70 cents and when all was said and done on that, it was worth $5.67 to me.
[1:15 p.m.]
Now, I don't want everybody here to think that I'm making a whole lot of money because I'm not. I mean there is a lot of handling, a lot of work goes into that. We have six employees and we only do about 6,000 board feet a week. But we sell about $10,000 every three weeks to Belgium and another little bit in the local flooring market. It benefits Nova Scotia and it benefits us all. I guess the point that I want to make is that I think if a person owns a piece of land then they should sell their logs wherever they can get the best price, no question, that's their business. But when we own it, we being Nova Scotians, then I think there needs to be a value-added policy that says that if a mill gets 10 per cent of their volume of wood off Crown land, that 10 per cent of their wood should be available at fair market price in the province to value-added producers. You don't have to do a lot of math to figure out the benefit of that.
I think that we need to sort of focus on it. Without question, some time ago, up until the last five years, hardwood was seen as an underutilized species, nobody really realized the value of it and it is there now. Our hardwoods are good hardwoods, being rock maple or sugar maple or yellow birch, it's the best in the world and when I say that, I speak from probably New Hampshire through to North Sydney. We don't really have to worry about competition from all the low-grade hardwoods that are coming out of the eastern European countries, because it doesn't have the same quality. So we have a commodity that's in demand and anything that we can do to see that that body has the value added to it in Nova Scotia is the direction that I think we need to go.
MR. MARCHBANK: If I could just read a paragraph from this report, it's an analysis. The growth of the Nova Scotia secondary wood product industry has been hindered by the past policies of the province with regard to the use of Crown land. This policy now threatens any significant growth in the sector. "According to a study in GPI Atlantic Report of November 2001 - pulp and paper revenue from one cubic meter of wood were $118 per m3 while wood flooring generated revenues of $1,200 to $1,600 per m3. At the same time, the same volume of wood produced seven times the number of workers." So for every 1,000 board feet or so of hardwood coming off Crown land, being fed into a mill whose primary interest is shipping lumber to feed their secondary plants in New Brunswick or Quebec, we're losing hundreds of man hours in employment and thousands and thousands of dollars in taxes, plus thousands and thousands of dollars in the added value on the wood, which adds up to millions.
MR. TAGGART: Can I make just one other comment? Also I think that it's worth noting that a lot of Crown land in Nova Scotia is under leasehold to large pulp and paper companies and there is no question that they have been a big benefit to the province, and they've seen hardwood until the last few years as a kind of a nuisance or a weed or whatever. They didn't have a use for it but they've since recognized the value and the big companies trade amongst themselves in terms of fibre for their pulp mills and this sort of thing. So now the big leaseholds like Bowater and Stora and Kimberly-Clark, they're starting to cut that hardwood heavier too and it's very convenient for them.
A drawback for us as small producers is that because we are labour intensive, we can really only use a small part of the higher quality of the wood, like higher quality logs - sugar maple and birch. It's difficult for small producers and as well, the big guys don't want to take all the low-end stuff out, so it is very easy for them to send that to these large mills. I can see their purpose for doing it but I guess the point I was wanting to make was that in the very near future, these big pulp and paper companies are going to cut the hardwood quite hard and a very large portion of that will go into those mills that are really just feeder mills for value-added businesses in St-Quentin, or wherever, in New Brunswick. If there is anything that can be done to make some portion of that available - not that that is easily done, logistically or anything like that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Any members of the committee who would like to ask some questions?
Ms. Massey.
MS. JOAN MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, I was just wondering, this report, when was that report released? We don't have the whole thing.
MR. MARCHBANK: It just came out in July of this year.
MS. MASSEY: And it was given to the government at the time?
MR. TAGGART: It was done by UCCB, Enterprise Cape Breton and ACOA funded it. I attended a lot of meetings over the course of it and there was a government rep - I think the government rep on that was Vince Santilli, I think he's from Economic Development, I can't say for sure. The report is not a secret, if that's what you're asking.
MR. MARCHBANK: It's available for sure.
MR. TAGGART: I think there's a move afoot to try to go in that direction. I know that the local producers are going to organize a little bit and try to put professional presentations together. We have never really had anyone speak on our behalf before either, we just struggled away, each on their own.
MS. MASSEY: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Allan, it's sort of a sad story, I guess, you had a set-up, you invested a lot of money and you went to work and provided employment and you thought you had a good market for your product, which I guess you did, but on the other end, you just didn't have the security of supply.
MR. MARCHBANK: We did until that other new mill started up.
MR. PARKER: Did you have an agreement with them? Did they provide you with anything in writing, or was it verbal, or how did you . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: There was no written agreement, I have checked this out. There was an understanding - I think you probably heard that too, Tom, that there was a written agreement. I checked it out with the people who were actually involved in the process. Some of the stuff went across their desks and they said there was really no written agreement but it was an understanding that Nova Scotia secondary wood products manufacturers would have first choice of the lumber that came out of that mill, that was sawed from logs that are produced in Nova Scotia.
MR. PARKER: But you never had a personal contract with Savoie/Dickson to buy so much every year from them or whatever?
MR. MARCHBANK: No, we couldn't, they wouldn't even talk to us.
MR. PARKER: But you sort of had a verbal understanding that they would be providing you with some . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: Well the people who were involved in starting this mill up - some of the people were in Nova Scotia and a matter of fact, some of the people were in management teams later on - had the understanding that the wood was going to be available to Nova Scotians. Once that mill started up, if you wanted to buy a stick of lumber from there you had to go to New Brunswick to buy it.
MR. PARKER: So you were only in the market to buy rough-sawn lumber, you didn't have the capability of handling logs?
MR. MARCHBANK: No, I did buy some logs but I got them custom sawed.
MR. PARKER: But your raw product was the rough lumber that you were purchasing from other mills that had rough sawn it?
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes, we bought a lot of lumber from B.A. Fraser in Cape Breton. When Savoie-Dickson started up, of course, he lost a lot of his logs initially and that upset our supply of lumber from him. He eventually, through agreements with Stora, got quite a bit of that supply back but it took him about a year.
MR. PARKER: You mentioned the Fraser mill in Cape Breton, were there other mills around the province that you could have purchased rough-sawn lumber or purchased logs . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: I went from one end of this province to the other. I bought lumber from backyards, from little sawmills.
MR. PARKER: There are some other large mills out there like Hoeg Brothers in Cumberland, or Harrison's, or different ones. You couldn't get any other supply?
MR. MARCHBANK: Nothing on a regular basis. After a bit, at the tail end, Bonnyman's in the Tatamagouche area did saw some hardwood logs, but the quality of logs he was getting was not all that good. He wasn't able to do it on a year-round basis, he was just going to be able to saw for a couple of months and then that lumber was going to have to be moved or stockpiled, and you can't keep green hardwood lumber around for too long before processing it. So it wasn't going to work because we had to have a supply every month.
MR. PARKER: How many board feet did you need on a monthly basis?
MR. MARCHBANK: We needed about 100,000 board feet a month.
MR. PARKER: Would that have been available through Savoie-Dickson at that time, that amount?
MR. MARCHBANK: That would be about two days' sawing.
MR. PARKER: So most of the Crown land then was being channelled into this one mill, was it, rather than all the other mills that were around?
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes. Like Tom said, it's convenient for the big companies, they're dealing with one customer, all of the stuff is going into that one place.
MR. PARKER: Was this government policy to have it directed that way or was it just industry objectives that they thought that was the best thing to do, or how did it happen to be?
MR. MARCHBANK: Government doesn't have a policy as far as I know, it was just convenient for industry to do that. The pulp companies and big lumber companies have leases on Crown lands, that when they cut that wood from Crown land they market it and it is convenient for them to put it through Savoie.
MR. PARKER: Because it was central, or because they were paying the best price, or they could handle the product?
MR. MARCHBANK: They could handle large volumes, they didn't have to look around for more than one market.
MR. TAGGART: If I could make just one comment. Large volumes of any greater species and that's where they really get us, that's where Savoie really, really gets the little guy, plus they're hard on the little guy; they are big business. I'm sorry to be talking out of turn but I struggle with this every day. If Allan was cutting a little hardwood, it didn't mean anything to Savoie in the whole big scheme of things but he was selling it to me. If Savoie could get a load of those logs in their yard, they would pay big money for those logs, so Allan would go back and say, gee, I got big money but, you know, it might not happen the next load. This is my opinion, this is the way I feel about the whole thing.
MR. PARKER: I just want to carry on, Mr. Chairman, if I can . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: You can have one more and then I want to go to Mr. Gaudet.
MR. PARKER: I want to come around to Crown land then, I guess. Twenty per cent of our lands in this province are Crown owned. Would you say that the majority of hardwood being harvested from Crown lands is going to Savoie-Dickson at this time?
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes, undoubtedly. The largest portion of hardwood is in Colchester-Cumberland Counties and Inverness.
MR. PARKER: And the vast majority of that production is going to the one mill, you feel . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: The Inverness part of it would be under Stora's administration, they would have access to that. So most of that, or a lot of it is probably going to B.A. Fraser. The stuff that comes off the mainland, probably most of it is going to Savoie.
[1:30 p.m.]
MR. PARKER: So your suggestion is that that Crown land hardwood, then . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just hold that thought, I want to go to Mr. Gaudet.
MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is exactly in that same line, in terms of Crown land. Did you try to access supply of the Crown land? I'm trying to understand what process is involved here. Is it restricted to certain companies or can anyone apply for wood supply off the Crown lands?
MR. MARCHBANK: The cutting leases are allotted out. I went to see Bill Langille - he's my MLA - and we discussed it. He referred me to a couple of different civil servants with the Department of Natural Resources. I went to see them and got no positive results from it.
MR. GAUDET: So you were told that, too late, you can't apply?
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes. As a result of that visit, that piece of hardwood, they put a small lot - nine acres - up for tender. I tendered on it and Tom tendered on it. He got it. He paid big bucks for it, I will tell you. I think that if all the lumber that came off the Crown land was sold for the price he paid for that, the government would be a lot richer. (Laughter)
MR. TAGGART: Can I comment on that?
MR. GAUDET: Sure.
MR. TAGGART: When my brother and I started to get into this business, I guess, in the first two or three years - we have always struggled for logging supply. We contacted - and I can't remember, I actually doubt that I still have correspondence, but I might - DNR. We ended up with a Mr. Dan Eidt. That's pretty well where we stopped on that. I mean, we were told that it really wasn't available and I'm really not too sure it is. I think that most of the Crown leaseholds not in protected areas are certainly tied up by the large pulp and paper companies now.
By the same token, I called - maybe you can call it working both ends - the manager at DNR for our local area for information, to try to sort of start from that direction too. He
basically told me I was wasting my time, you know. He said I don't have - you know, it's going to come across my desk. You can send it to Dan Eidt, he's going to send it back to me and it's going to come across my desk if I have that wood available, and I don't, it's as simple as that. Don't waste your time, don't bother. From that point on, we didn't bother. We tried other avenues.
Can I make one more comment that sort of deals with that situation? This tender that Allan spoke of that we got, it was a piece of land that was tendered, and we paid pretty near twice what anybody else would have paid for that land. When I went in to pay the bill, it was kind of an inside joke that this guy, you know, was going to lose his shirt, the whole deal. I didn't lose my shirt, I actually made a buck on it.
But anyway, so then they turn around and they decided to do another tender. Gee, they made big money on it, you know, and I'm not talking about the Minister of Natural Resources there, I'm talking about people who work in these local offices. We made big money here, we looked pretty good, you know. They called another tender and this time the wood is not anywhere near the quality of wood. There are all kinds of conditions on cutting, and I agree with a lot of them; a lot of it has to do with forest management.
But my point is that suddenly it was a joke when we paid that much money. It wasn't worth that but it turned out that it was. So the next time when they tendered it, the upset price was so high that nobody - there were about eight of us who went back and toured the lot with the DNR officials and nobody even bid on it because they wouldn't bid the upset price on it.
My point is, this is government land and why are they squeezing the little guy? I just didn't feel it was right. I mean, suddenly they realized the value was there and so then they wanted to squeeze it right to the end.
MR. MARCHBANK: The point being that if a log is cut off of Crown land and shipped out of the province in its raw source, it doesn't generate any added value to Nova Scotia. It doesn't provide any employment, it doesn't pay any taxes. You know, if Tom or anybody else takes a log, saws it up, processes it, that takes the value of the wood from $3 to $12 a board foot, or whatever, you know, increases it by three or four times. The people who are working for him pay taxes, he hires trucks, local trucks, he buys fuel, you know; thousands and thousands of dollars to into the local economy. If that log goes out of the province, goes to China or wherever, you might get a half-decent value for it off the stump but you are actually losing the value of that log.
MR. GAUDET: I'm just trying to understand the process involved here. Is the government policy fair to everyone, whether big or small, any type of operation, if government decides just in 2004 they are going to have x number of acres available for harvesting, that the list is available, anyone can bid low or high? I'm just trying to understand the process involved here. Is that how it works?
MR. TAGGART: Well, not really. I mean, they called two tenders in our local area and they called a tender on some logs in Pictou this past summer that were cut on Crown land illegally. That land is not available, I don't think, I really don't think that land is available. I think that things could be done to ensure that either the logs, rough lumber, or whatever, are made available at market price from the larger contractors.
We do buy some logs from Kimberly-Clark, for example, which is one of the large leaseholds. But by and large, I think that most all the Crown land here is tied up and it has been tied up historically for - I guess the purpose would have been employment for the large pulp and paper mills.
MR. MARCHBANK: Tell him where you buy your logs.
MR. TAGGART: We bring a lot of our logs from Maine. We can't buy them. That sounds silly but it's true. We came to the conclusion that we couldn't survive unless we found another source of raw material about three or four years ago and it took a lot of work. But we have a forest now in Maine and the trucks haul the popple, if you can believe it, to Woodland, Maine and I get a back haul with the sawlogs from a company down in Millinocket. Anyway, that's the . . .
MR. GAUDET: Okay, thanks.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaudet, thank you. Mr. Langille.
MR. WILLIAM LANGILLE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I welcome both of you here today. Of course, you are both from my area and I know both of you. Just a bit of background. I have been working on this for about four years now. I'm certainly not happy with the situation that we inherited and past governments also inherited.
Now, just to let the committee know what they might not be aware of, on Crown land in Nova Scotia, you cannot ship round log out of the province. In other words, it has to be cut. That's just on Crown land, that's not pertaining to private woodlots. I believe that we have - you said 20 per cent, I think, Mr. Parker, but I think about 28 per cent is Crown land in Nova Scotia - approximately, anyway.
I certainly sympathized with Mr. Marchbank when he came to see me. I was over toward his plant. He had a thriving business, from what I saw at that time. However, it didn't work out and I certainly felt sorry.
Anyway, the difference between Northern Lumber and - Mr. Taggart, you do have your own sawmill?
MR. TAGGART: Yes.
MR. LANGILLE: Which you did not?
MR. MARCHBANK: No, but I had one available.
MR. LANGILLE: Yes, I understand that. I believe that our value-added products off Crown lands are the answer to Nova Scotia when we're talking hardwood. It only stands to reason, it only makes common sense. Does anybody here know if Savoie/Dickson has cutting rights on Crown land, for sure?
MR. TAGGART: I don't believe they do.
MR. LANGILLE: I don't believe they do either.
MR. MARCHBANK: They don't need them.
MR. LANGILLE: But that was brought up. I don't think that they do have, as far as I can find out anyway.
Now, I'm not particularly happy with the way that Kimberly-Clark and Stora cut the hardwood on Crown land because I've flown over what they have cut and what they leave behind, in my opinion, is almost a disgrace. They use heavy equipment to cut. They don't go in with chain saws. It's all heavy equipment and when you look at hardwood, it has a huge crown on it and the trunk isn't that long as compared to softwood. They bring this heavy equipment in and they cut and then their chippers will not chip the remaining, you see. What's left over, you have all these acres and acres of huge trees. When they go in they don't, from what I see, select cut. It's all cut. (Interruptions)
Well, clear-cut, yes, on the part that I flew over anyway. I understand below New Glasgow, toward Eastern Shore, that there are tracts of land clear-cut down there and actually for kilometres. I haven't been down there but I was told this last week, as a matter of fact. I haven't been down there so I can't comment but I can comment on what I see around my area, which is on the Cobequid Mountains where we have, as Mr. Taggart said, the best hardwood in the world, sugar maple. Having said all that, my stand is - and I have been bringing this up repeatedly, just to clarify that.
I'm in agreement with what Mr. Taggart and Mr. Marchbank are saying on the hardwood and I know Mr. Taggart is getting his hardwood from Maine, the round logs, and God forbid if they ever made a law that you couldn't ship them out, because we would be in trouble. I know in that other company there - I won't name the company, but another company that has since stopped producing hardwood flooring and that and other products, too, when it comes to hardwood - getting it as far away as Quebec and the States and New Brunswick, when they could get it. I think it is a problem.
I'm going to ask Mr. Taggart, I understand that Savoie/Dickson has value-added processing industries in northern New Brunswick. Is that right?
MR. TAGGART: Yes, it's in St-Quentin.
MR. LANGILLE: Is that St-Quentin?
MR. TAGGART: St-Quentin, New Brunswick. It's right on the border, it's really northern New Brunswick. I have never been there but I understand it is a very progressive company. It's at the top end of technology and all new advancements and stuff like that but in New Brunswick, they have a bit of a different natural resources policy there and all allowable cut in New Brunswick is allocated through sort of a - this is on Crown land - system that starts out with the primary pulp and paper. They have a big pulp and paper industry there, same as we do but these pulp and paper mills that have these big leases are obligated to funnel this stuff down through the channels.
Anyway, the allowable cut in New Brunswick is maxed out and Groupe Savoie is a big company and I expect some time ago realized that they were maxed out and wanted to expand and where we were calling this an underutilized species, it is only natural they came down here. I know they keep getting picked on here and it's not really fair, but they have upset the apple cart for all of us, it is unfortunate that this one company is that big but they've certainly strained this. I understand, Forest Insight in Marion Bridge, Cape Breton, I think they made a deal just recently that they can get some products from Savoie, because they use like a kind of a lower end, lower quality wood that goes into flooring. But the sugar maple and the real high end birch, I don't believe, unless something has changed, they sell it. I'm starting to ramble here.
[1:45 p.m.]
I just want to comment on a couple of things that you've said. They don't have cutting rights but a large or significant amount of good quality hardwoods is cut on Crown land by larger producers because of efficiency, not really money, but because of efficiency and trade-offs, goes to that mill and that good quality wood is loaded and they go right by my door, about six tractor-trailer loads a day, go right by my door. It is sort of a little bit irritating.
Could I just make two comments on what you spoke of earlier. One is, round logs are not allowed to leave the province. That's not totally true. As long as they can call them a veneer log, because there are no veneer mills in Nova Scotia, if they can call it a veneer log, it can leave the province. As a matter of fact, when DNR calls a tender, they say in the tender that they will provide written permission to ship veneer logs out of the province. The point that I would like to make on that, if I could, is that I can't pay, I being a small producer, or any sawmill can't pay the $1,600 per thousand that those veneer logs are able to be sold for in the United States. Likely, we would be maxed out at $1,100 per thousand and be hard-pressed to make any money out it.
But DNR or the Province of Nova Scotia would be better off to sell me that log for $1,100 per thousand and let me make it worth $3,000 per thousand than they would be to let the guy that's harvesting or clear-cutting or whatever, make an extra $400 per thousand on it then let it go to Quebec or the United States or China, because they're loading these logs in containers now and sending them to China and peeling them and sending them back. They're better off for that to stay here.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille, did you want one more? Do you want to tidy up?
MR. LANGILLE: Actually, I have quite a few questions to ask. About Northern Lumber and also about the province. I just wanted to, just for a second, I just wanted to elaborate on Mr. Taggart saying we're not picking on Savoie-Dickson, however, having said that, they don't provide any value-added jobs to Nova Scotia from what I can understand. I also understand, and this will probably come up, that ACOA lent them $1 million and I also, although I can't verify this but I will, simply because I didn't have time and I couldn't get the answers, but the previous government, and I'm not saying anything about the previous government, I'm just saying that it is my understanding that they also lent Savoie/Dickson money through Economic Development.
I have a problem when Savoie-Dickson and what Mr. Taggart alluded to, bringing their company down here and shipping it all to their other companies in northern New Brunswick for value-added products, when we could have the same here. I guess it was $100,000 that Economic Development lent. Anyway, just to clarify, I'm glad you got the information because I couldn't get it.
I know that Savoie-Dickson gets their hardwood from Kimberly-Clark and Stora. I also know that right in behind me, Kimberly-Clark has a lot of hardwood, in fact, probably the majority of hardwood in Nova Scotia. It seems to me, and I don't know if Savoie-Dickson is giving them a higher price or for whatever reason, and I know from past experience with other companies, that they cannot get a supply of logs from Kimberly-Clark, maybe a load or two and that would be the extent. I will come back, but I just wanted to make that statement.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was thinking there was a question but it is good information.
Now, Mr. Colwell, please.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: Just a couple of questions. I agree with you, the value-added, especially the kind of products that are turned out, with hardwood flooring and things like that, are excellent products and we need to do more and more of that in Nova Scotia. It has always been the attitude in Nova Scotia, well, they can do it better if they're from away, which is crap, always has been crap but people still believe that. I don't know why.
What is the gross volume in your hardwood operation, now? For sales.
MR. TAGGART: Our year end will show about somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 in export sales and likely about $180,000 in factory-direct flooring sales.
MR. COLWELL: So you're close to $1 million a year.
MR. TAGGART: Not yet. We're trying to get there.
MR. COLWELL: The big hold-up is supply, of course, I would imagine?
MR. TAGGART: Yes. I am only one.
MR. COLWELL: How many companies in your sort of situation, not exactly meaning hardwood flooring but would use products like that, finished products? Value added is anything that you add value to, so I would be very cautious using that term.
MR. TAGGART: I want to be clear but in doing what I do, I expect there are six or eight around the province. The real big player in this, before you get started into furniture or cabinets and mouldings, is a company in Cape Breton and I think that they need to be credited, really and truly, they were a small company, much like ourselves for years and they took the big leap two or three years ago and they're the only - well, there is a company in northern New Brunswick, that makes pre-finished hardwood flooring - but they make pre-finished hardwood flooring now . . .
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Finewood flooring?
MR. TAGGART: No, Finewood is unfinished. Peter Christiano, they've been around for some time but Forest Insight in Marion Bridge. I think things are going quite good there now and they employ 45 or 50 people. They take a really low grade hardwood and they make good quality, they make our flooring for us, but they're a real example of value adding in Nova Scotia. That's what I do, behind there on the table, that's what I call value adding. I have taken that stick, those larger pieces are worth $4,400 per thousand and I can't get that
out of it here if I finished it here. So I am taking that to the max that I can on a high grade white wood. Stephen and the folks at Forest Insight are taking the low end of it and making money for me and, of course, they're doing it themselves on a big scale. The same with - somebody mentioned Peter Christiano, I know they're Finewood, they do the same thing, it is just not finished. There are several others. Steve Rasmussen in Pictou County and Vandewiels in Antigonish. There are a lot of people and everybody struggles through it. (Interruption) Yes, I keep forgetting about those guys.
We're forming our own Nova Scotia value-added producers' group. Our founding meeting is Thursday. When that's all said and done and shaken out, it will be awful nice if the directors or whoever might be the president of that has an opportunity to speak to you folks. I think it may be an even more broad-minded view because they'll represent cabinet makers, moulding makers and flooring makers. I'm sorry, did I answer your question or did I just ramble?
MR. COLWELL: No, actually, I'm glad you did sort of elaborate on my question, because it is important to know roughly how many industries are similar to yours.
MR. TAGGART: I promise you that it will amaze me and we're going to put that information together sometime in the next six months.
MR. COLWELL: Also, as you do that process, it would be nice to see what kind of economic impact you've had province wide, because you very clearly stated what the impact has been on both your operations. That's significant in a small community, very significant, and the good quality jobs too, jobs that require some training . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: It is generally considered that it is a multiplier of ten, from the rough lumber, from the log to the finished product.
MR. COLWELL: So every time you get a rough log that you can turn into a finished product . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: If you take a log that's worth $1 and you process it, you should get $10 at the other end.
MR. COLWELL: That's quite a good return.
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes, it's good added value. It makes a lot of work. It's a high, labour-intensive job.
MR. COLWELL: That's good because it adds a lot of value to the community, like people's wages and all the other investments you make and all the money they spin off.
So the big question is your supply. That's the same with every industry you talk to. If you talked to Stora, they would say they don't have enough wood and of course they would be telling you a tale. That is your real concern. You said earlier, if you could get 10 per cent of the cut, maybe you could explain that to me in a bit more detail.
MR. TAGGART: I don't have the figures to back this up but I expect if we took even 10 per cent of what goes through that big mill - and I hate to keep referring to them but they do more than everybody else in the province together. You know B.A. Fraser is a pretty modern, efficient hardwood sawmill in Margaree there, but they don't come near to what Savoie produces and it would take a very small percentage of what is actually going through Savoie to make a real significant difference to a lot of businesses that are within 50 miles of them. That doesn't include the people who are down the South Shore doing whatever and there is a lot of value-added wood down there, too. So 10 per cent would make a big difference, no question, but that's just a number I pulled out of my head.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Now I have no other interveners for their first time - oh, Mr. Sampson. Sorry about that.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: You say that the big companies are taking all the wood. What do they do with it? Do they process it like you are planning on doing or do they just pulverize it all up and make pulp or paper or whatever with it?
MR. TAGGART: The big companies, in most cases, send their wood to Savoie and then it goes to St-Quentin to be made into pallets or glued panels like Allan used to make and Stephen makes, or he makes for us. He does the dimensions stock. There's a fairly big market in Europe, Lithuania. We send some wood to Lithuania. There is a fairly big market there to take pieces like the three-inch wide piece that's there and that goes over and they slice that three or four times and they glue it to two different pieces of wood to make that pre-engineered wood flooring. So that wood goes from the big processors to the big mill to St-Quentin and that's where that ends up from there. But it leaves here in what I would call a raw product, what I would call a board. If I bought a one common board, I would pay $1,100 or $1,000 or for a two common I would pay $7,000 or a three I would pay $5,000. That's what it leaves here as. That's the value of it when it leaves this province.
MR. MARCHBANK: But there is a lot of wood that is going into hardwood chips that could be salvaged and processed. I bought a load of hardwood logs a couple of years ago for firewood and out of that pile - it was a 10-cord load - I got about 700 square feet of select hardwood flooring.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: They will take it and, as you say, they won't cull the wood. Whatever is on the truck, it just goes in and it's processed. Would they cull the wood or would they allow you to cull that wood while it is being loaded so that you could purchase, say the good wood? Would they ever allow you to do that or would you interfere with the speed of the process?
MR. TAGGART: I only know about Kimberly-Clark and they do that a little bit. We get the odd load from them but we are very labour intensive.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Shoot from the hip. Don't talk to me in parables. Just lay it on the line, no bullshit. That's what we're here for. It's a one-shot deal. We want to do something for you, if we can.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sampson, could you retract that?
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Yes, sorry about that, absolutely. Be forthright in your statements.
MR. TAGGART: I said the value of our sales for the year is up around $600,000 to $700,000 and I do that all with a portable band sawmill, that's where I start everything. That's very labour intensive but I do it in such a way that I saw what I want and it works for what I do. I forget, what was, sorry (Interruptions) Yes, but the question. I forget why I got started off - oh yes, would they let us pick it?
[2:00 p.m.]
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Will they allow you to cull the A product from the whole loads of - I mean there's real good stuff that's going to be processed.
MR. TAGGART: Kimberly-Clark does that a little bit, I don't know if Stora does, we've never been able to buy anything from them, Kimberly-Clark does that a little bit but what they end up doing is they will sell us a couple of loads and then they'll say, well, it costs us too much money to sort that wood. So, they say we can put it all in a load and we send it all to Savoie and it doesn't matter that Savoie only pays $120 per 1,000 for the pallet wood and when that load gets there, it is 25 per cent pallet wood. They're allowed 20 per cent that don't make a number two sawlog. It's a long story but at the end of the day, they find it too inefficient and they can't be bothered dealing with somebody as small or insignificant as I am. Is that blunt? That's the way it is.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Yes.
MR. TAGGART: Yes.
MR. MARCHBANK: Could I say something? If the wood was put into a yard and then graded, like there are grades for hardwood, standing grades that are accepted internationally, if that wood was graded, the logs put in piles and made available to people to go in and buy a truckload or whatever, it would solve a lot of the problems, at market price, I don't mean, except perhaps the Crown land stuff, the high-end stuff, like Tom said goes for $1,600 and he couldn't afford to pay for that. But it's worth more money to sell it to Tom for $1,100, it's worth more money to the province in the long run.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: That covers it. I talked to a gentleman who was very upset at the fact that, like you said, you get dirt cheap prices at the farm gate and by the time it comes back as a finished product, if you get a $1 at the farm gate per foot for the thing, it can come back as high as $11, he said, if you deal with Florida. Some of the places in Florida will pay that $11 at the farm gate because it is so valuable of a product that we're kind of giving away.
Your frustration with the trucks going by your door, Cape Breton is one giant lump of coal and we import coal. The lobsters leave, I look out my living room window and see three truckloads of lobsters every night go up the hill, gone to be processed in New Brunswick. So, I know your frustration.
I asked you about what do they do with their hardwood? How many companies, you're getting together now, so you may have some clout if you get all your companies together, because you seem to be very fragmented, you don't know how many companies are there. You may have a lot more clout than what you think.
My other question was, what do you hope to accomplish here today? What's your expectation of this committee if the business that this gentleman had went under in 2001 - and in his opening statement he said he didn't want to resurrect that business today or whatever - what is the hope of you coming to the committee? What can we supposedly decide or help or do; what's your reason for coming here?
MR. TAGGART: My reason for coming here is just to say that Allan and I have known each other for some time and Allan was in one day awhile back and said he was coming and we talked about the industry and he invited me to come with him. I try to stay fairly current in the industry, because that's my livelihood. But my biggest personal reason is to hopefully make each and every one of you folks aware of the value of the small value-added processors in Nova Scotia and to make everybody aware of the value of those hardwoods in Nova Scotia so that if at some time in the future this comes up in the Legislature, you will all recognize the benefit that it has to Nova Scotia and I hope all, from all Parties, would support a value-added forest products industry in Nova Scotia, because I doubt, I've been sitting here trying to place MLAs with regions and I expect that there are not too many in this room who don't have a constituent who is negatively affected by this.
I only know a small number of value-added people, they are closely associated with what I do, but there are many, many others, Peter Christiano, but I don't know him very well, I actually met him in Cape Breton about two months ago when this Dossenbach report, we were at a meeting and I know that he would tell you the same thing. He has exported flooring around the world for years and he struggles for wood today. David Fraser struggles for wood. Steve Rasmussen, I am sure, Murray Gaul, there are any number of people, they're doing mouldings. I met a guy from Hammonds Plains at this wood symposium/seminar who's making mouldings, could sell tractor-trailer loads of mouldings in the eastern United States but can't really get his hands on good quality birch. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ramble, but that's my purpose.
MR. MARCHBANK: There's a directory there of Atlantic Canada speciality wood manufacturers. All the ones in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Just one final thing, Mr. Chairman. It was Peter's salesperson, I suppose, or company representative who made a presentation to the Victoria County Council at one time. She said that one of her main problems was trying to get somebody to cut hardwood in the wintertime, that when the sap is gone down into the roots, that's the purest white at the time you can get it, but nobody wants to go out into the woods, up to their hips in snow to try to cut the sticks (Interruptions) Or up to their ears. She would pay $30 for that log in the wintertime, but she will pay $10 for in the summertime, because now it's full of sap and the colour has changed and the value has gone down because it's full of sap, as compared in the wintertime, it's twice the colour. Is that a . . .
MR. TAGGART: Yes. A lot of it too, there's good hardwood growth in the Highlands too and you get up there and you get snowed in, in the woods up there and they can't market it for months at a time because it's snowed in. It's a struggle that way.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sampson, I'm assuming you're finished. I can say you're finished for now.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I'm finished, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hines.
MR. GARY HINES: Gentlemen, thank you for coming in. One of the things that I'm interested in, and I applaud you for taking some steps to get organized. Can you tell us somewhat of the structure that you have pursued, because obviously there's a marketing piece that's all askew as well when you take people like Alan Shaw from Cornwallis Park, they bring their lumber in from Russia and Siberia to manufacture for IKEA. So obviously there are some marketing glitches too. Can you tell me something about the organization to date or have you just started to consider organization?
MR. TAGGART: I can't put the name on the guy that manages that plant down there. I met him one time, Bartlett, I think his name is. Many of us, Nova Scotia producers, have belonged to the wood products group, and they're based out of Fredericton, New Brunswick. One of the struggles that they're going through right now is - and they have members from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and P.E.I. - they've never been able to access any kind of financing, and I'm not talking about running the organization but for research and training and that sort of thing from anybody but New Brunswick, because they're perceived as a New Brunswick organization. They were told point-blank some time ago - and I don't know which government or what Party, I could care less, in Nova Scotia told them that they had no interest in funding a New Brunswick organization. As a result, one of the recommendations in this Dossenbach report is that we form a Nova Scotia chapter of that wood products group that has their own association. A letter has gone out to everybody we could flag in Nova Scotia who is in any way, shape or form adding value to wood and invited them to a meeting Thursday at Howard Johnson's in Truro and it will go from there.
One of the first challenges of that group, once it's organized and able to focus, will be to put a dollar value on our industry. I expect that the next focus will be to go to the government, as organized people with facts and figures, and ask for a value-added policy that directs the wood that comes off Crown land to the local value-added producers. That's it, right?
MR. HINES: I think you're right in forming a Nova Scotia chapter, and register it with Joint Stocks. Then, when you come forward, you have a registered entity with the proper spokespersons. I watched the Truckers Association, for an example, struggle with organization and struggle with getting anywhere, and they're no further ahead today than they were 20 years ago for the simple reason that they didn't get organized properly and have proper spokespersons and so on working on their behalf. They've failed miserably when others around them have succeeded with registered entities and with going forward. So I think you're on the right track to do that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will start the second leg. Mr. Parker, you're first on the new list.
MR. PARKER: Maybe I will just comment or reaffirm, I think our guests today have probably hit the nail right on the head, of what needs to be done to solve the problem that we have. I think all of us around this table, no matter which political stripe, agree that value-added production is the way to go. It creates jobs, it encourages production of good quality timberlands here in this province. The suggestion, Tom, that you've come up with, whether it's 10 per cent or whatever per cent, the amount of production off Crown land, if it's 10 per cent, then that's the amount that maybe should be available to Nova Scotia producers, whether it's on a tender or at a set price or what, I'm not sure how you would do the logistics.
To see those green pieces of lumber going out of the province and you're not able to get it for your own production just doesn't seem fair. It doesn't make economic sense for our province to allow that to happen. We probably need legislation or government policy of some type to allow that to happen, that a certain percentage, if it comes off our lands, the lands that belong to the people, Crown land, then it should be available to our people here to produce value-added products. Do you have any further comments on that? It seems to be the answer to what I'm hearing.
MR. MARCHBANK: Yes, we need policies in place that will allow that to happen. It's not simple by any stretch of the imagination. It's quite complicated. The further you delve into it, probably the more complicated it might get. This is a very good report, this one here, that could add information to anybody. It's put out by the Cape Breton community college. There's a lot of stuff in there, recommendations and everything. People who are in the industry had input into it. It doesn't have all the answers, but it has a lot of them.
MR. TAGGART: It says in there that we lack vision - one of his comments in that report, this Tom Dossenbach - I think it might say that Nova Scotia value-added producers, by and large, lack vision. I can envision a lot of things, but I can't go to the bank and borrow $0.5 million if I can't keep my operation. If I go day to day on raw product, it's pretty hard to have a vision. I expect there are a lot of things, if we were organized a little bit better, that we could do ourselves, maybe, but we need some help.
I'm sure that it will inconvenience some of the bigger people, like Savoie or Kimberly-Clark or Stora. Stora is going to cut a lot of hardwood in the next five years, it's critical that that doesn't all go to New Brunswick. Anyway, it will inconvenience them a little bit, but not near as much as we're inconvenienced now. They're big guys and they play a very important part in this province, and what little bit of inconvenience it causes them is not going to matter that much, in the way that it's going to help us. That's my honest opinion.
[2:15 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille.
MR. LANGILLE: I know we're drifting away from Northern Lumber, but I think the whole idea is . . .
MR. MARCHBANK: That's okay, Northern Lumber drifted away.
MR. LANGILLE: . . . to see what is wrong with what happened. Anyway, just a couple of things for the record. I think it was through my lobbying that that tender went out and the column was settled by the way. That was not what I wanted, but anyway that was the tender that Mr. Taggart bid on. The other thing, this is really very important to me, because if anybody ever saw where I lived, it's right in the Cobequid Hills. I own Tree Farm No. 3,
the Canadian Tree Farm Association, in Nova Scotia. So it is very important to me, and I'm just stating that.
I think we're on the right track, but we're losing a bit of sight. I just want to go into that, just for a second. I think where we're losing sight is that we have Stora and Kimberly-Clark, and as I previously said Kimberly-Clark owns a lot of hardwood in the Cobequid Mountains, probably the majority of it. Where the problem arises with these big companies is that when they cut hardwood - and these are beautiful trees which are the best in the world - once you clear-cut, as everybody knows, then softwood grows in that place and you lose that hardwood forever.
I think what we need on Crown land is a type of select cut, not clear-cut, that could be managed to ensure that in that place new sugar maple starts to grow. If we had that, we could cut for generations, along with what we have now. I think that's what we have to hammer home to our government or any government in the future, that if we're going to provide value-added products in our province we have to ensure that we have regeneration of growth. In fact I had a meeting yesterday for a couple of hours on this subject. That was made prior, I must say, before we were bringing Northern Lumber into this committee. I discussed that at length, and I think that's the way to go. I would like to hear Mr. Taggart's and Mr. Marchbank's comments on that.
MR. TAGGART: I don't want to sound too knowledgeable because, really, I'm not. I took a course at the forest rangers school some time back, and there was a gentleman who had been in the U.S. forestry service for 30 or 40 years. He had retired from there and the U.S. forestry service recognized the value of hardwood a long time ago, because they have the furniture industry down there in North Carolina and that. He studied all his life, growing trees, growing maple trees. It has been commonplace in Nova Scotia to cut these hardwood lots, because, really and truly, up until a few years ago they were just a nuisance to these guys anyway. When you cut a hardwood lot, it just grows up in suckers and after a while it grows up in some spruce or fir or whatever.
If you take a hardwood lot - and this can be proven, not by me but by others - if you take a good sugar maple stand and you properly manage it with an uneven age management, and you go in and you take the big, mature trees out, they've got some pretty good value in them, and you take the low end, the garbage out, and you leave an uneven aged, properly spaced growth of maple trees in there, by taking those big trees out that had the big crowns on them, you're releasing those smaller ones and they're getting the sun in the growing season and they're growing. You can grow a maple tree, believe it or not, and I've counted a lot of growth rings on these trees and they are old, old, old and stopped growing. But you can grow three inches in 10 years once you have released that tree.
You can do a harvest every 10 years and continue to improve the value of that woodlot. But if you take an accountant or whatever who is looking at money value and investments down the road, and you take a tree that is a maple tree that has an eight-inch stem on it today, a nice, straight stem and it has a piece of firewood in it that is worth $60 a cord or $180 per thousand, and you let them grow 3 inches from 8 inches to 11 inches, and suddenly he is worth anywhere from $650 to $950 per thousand, you do that in 10 years, you are pretty hard pressed to get a better investment than that anywhere, aren't you?
That works and that will happen. I didn't come in here on a forest management kick, you know, but if we can get a policy like that in Nova Scotia on Crown lands, I mean, we have got a resource that can't be replaced, that they can't bring cheap birch out of the Baltics. I want to speak on that just for a minute. You can't bring cheap birch out of the Baltics to replace it because it is there, it has got characteristics that no other wood does, we have it and we shouldn't give it away.
The broker that sells my wood brings up to 11 containers a month out of Lithuania into Montreal and then into North Carolina, of that cheap birch out of the Baltics. That is ruining that furniture industry in North Carolina. Anyway, we have got it and they can't bring that in anywhere to replace what we have got. We just need to grow it right.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I move on, Mr. Langille?
MR. LANGILLE: Sure, I just wanted to bring that to the committee's attention.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Ms. Massey.
MS. MASSEY: Thanks. I have just been sitting here listening and this is a lot of new information for me. It is a sad story, not just for yourself and your business, but it is just a sad state of affairs that the government can use our taxpayers' dollars to support companies that are not Nova Scotia companies and give them millions of dollars, or $1 million at least, in money, and then put our own local businesses at risk of failure, when they can't even access timber that we own, the people of Nova Scotia, off of our own Crown lands.
So, certainly, at the very least, I agree - and let's just say it is 10 per cent - if there is 10 per cent Crown lands out there that these companies are taking the trees from, then it is our businesses here that should get first shot at those. Let's give our Nova Scotia companies preferential treatment. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Some of these big mills have huge tracts of land, big, long leases, 10-year leases, and what chance have we got to get in there and compete with that?
I would like to go back - and I don't think this is probably the right venue to do it, and it is not fair to ask you the question, but it would be interesting to see why that company got those loans in the first place. I don't know if you have any information on that.
MR. TAGGART: Can I comment? This would be an opinion.
MS. MASSEY: Sure.
MR. TAGGART: I expect that at that time, there was information on the books and whoever the powers that be were at that time, made the decision, looked and saw an opportunity to create jobs and a written statement that said that the hardwood in Nova Scotia is an underutilized species, are the words that were used. I expect that had a lot to do with it, without question. But times have changed and people have realized the difference. I don't know what we can do about it now but that's . . .
MS. MASSEY: In the future, I guess it is just something that government always has to be aware that things can change and there needs to be flexibility built into whatever policies are put out there so that we can protect our own resources here in this province. Certainly, Mr. Langille's comments on clear-cutting, and everything - I won't repeat those but I am certainly with you on those.
Also, your comments, Tom, on a different way of harvesting the forest certainly is something that we are following behind and lagging behind on. You also mentioned that New Brunswick has a different way of doing business that is protecting their own people and it seems to me, you know, we are just not good at doing that here in Nova Scotia, protecting ourselves, protecting our resources.
You can talk about wood or natural gas or Nova Scotia Power selling natural gas while they poison us with crude oil. And Cape Breton, the same boat, with importing coal. There are all those issues and somebody is going to have to sit down and actually fix this problem. Hopefully, it will be this government. We can, I guess, at least be hopeful that somebody will be listening and go forward and take some steps to fix this situation. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Langille, do you want to make another comment?
MR. LANGILLE: Yes, I would like to comment on - probably what had happened years ago - you have to remember, years ago we were trying to create jobs as we are now. It is just an ongoing process. However, you look at Kimberly-Clark, which was Scott Paper, at that time you were putting a big plant in Pictou County. The same with Stora, you know, on the Strait. What happened at that time - people always think they are doing the right thing. I don't think there is anybody in government, or certainly no MLAs that I know of who are not working in the best interests of the people.
However, back then we gave long-term leases. You have to understand that. These long-term leases are not expired and they will not expire for - not in my lifetime. So that is what we have to look at now. And I don't know if there is any way of changing these leases or having them change the way that they do their cutting. So we have to look at that aspect too. You just can't go in and stop them because these are in law and they are long-term leases. I believe some are 90-year leases, if I am not mistaken. Do you have a handle on that, anybody?
MR. MARCHBANK: I think these companies often want things from the government. So if they want something, then the government is in the position to say, this is what we want. This has been in the best interest of Nova Scotia, that these logs and stuff are processed in Nova Scotia and if you want certain things to happen, then we want this to happen. So they can be changed. It has to be done - you can't go in and shut them down, that's for sure - through negotiation and bargaining.
MR. TAGGART: You know, I bet that the - these big companies are independent and full of themselves, or whatever, you know, but I will bet you any money that I don't know who the head honcho would be at Kimberly-Clark, but I bet if he picked up the phone tomorrow morning and the Minister of Natural Resources was on the phone and he said, listen, Bill, you know, I would like to see you guys kind of start to think about the little guy a little bit more here and, you know, we worked with you guys for the last 50 years here and you have helped us create employment and the whole deal, but I think it is time that you guys started recognizing the little guy and try and put some wood that way, why, I don't think he is going to hang the phone up, you know, he's going to start thinking about that a little bit. I think that would be a first step, pick the phone up and say - anyway, he's not going to ignore them, I will guarantee that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille, are you done, or do you have another comment?
MR. LANGILLE: Well, I would just like to comment. You are probably right on that and I don't know if it has ever been done, but I know that - like I say, I have been working on this for the last four years and I think people are starting to hear. It is something that I will personally continue to work on. I really believe that people, especially people who work in Natural Resources, the managers, if they haven't already, they ought to start looking at things differently. This, as a government, and as Opposition Critics and so on, I think it is all of our jobs and positions to try to work together on this. I don't think there is anybody here who doesn't agree that there is a problem. There are avenues, I think, we can take. Thank you.
[2:30 p.m.]
MR. MARCHBANK: Could I make a comment? In regard to the Department of Natural Resources, they are and have been historically very closely tied to industry, they're sort of almost integrated. A lot of the people in Natural Resources don't like to offend people in industry because someday they might be working for them. But, in all fairness, I attended a workshop a week or so ago on hardwood and they do have some pilot projects going in regard to the development of hardwood on a sustainable basis. They have various plots and stuff that they're doing experiments on and that would be very good down the road, 50 years hence, but we need things done now that will make the supply available, that's in circulation now, that it will be made available to producers in Nova Scotia.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to make some comments. I think whatever approach I like to see government - and I mean any government - take is probably two-pronged. One is in the short term, to try to alleviate the problems in the industry that exists today and the other one is to look down the road in the long term. There's nothing worse that I can envisage is to be part of a process that kind of frees up some hardwood for the value-added sector, or tries to, and then winds up in a situation whereby we try to exhaust the supply of hardwood in the province and then put companies into jeopardy because they can't get it, even though we're trying to get them Nova Scotia hardwood.
So I would like to see some type of an approach that actually says, this is all the hardwood we have, at some point from the beginning, and say, then we can grow the industry this much. When we get there, there's not going to be any more growth. Rather than have 10 or 15 per cent overcapacity to handle it and not have the resource to do it and then risk putting people out of work at that stage.
The long-term leases, and Mr. Langille raised a good point, I remember looking at one contract and it seems to me it was a renewable contract every 10 years. I'm always amazed, I will bet that you will find that the companies would be willing to do lots of things, make lots of changes in those agreements that are beneficial to them, but are probably not going to be interested in any changes that are beneficial to somebody else. Governments seem to be hog-tied when it comes to implementing changes but absolutely not hog-tied when it comes to taking the right to strike away from nurses. That can happen pretty quickly.
I want to say that policy around the production or growth of hardwood is an interesting area to go. Mr. Langille kind of initiated some discussion there. One of the things that does happen, and this would just be in mixed stands or in hardwood stands, but presently the thinking in this province is go in and spray those hardwoods so that you promote softwood growth. So, certainly nothing starts growing faster, you can cut softwood, they don't sucker, I mean there is some bit of expertise on leaving a few limbs on balsam fir stumps and those will turn up and in the right conditions they will start to grow another tree, and you can trim that into a Christmas tree. That's not widely used, I think probably because it doesn't
work as well as either replanting or whatever. But in the case of hardwoods, new growth can be generated quite quickly out of hardwood stumps and what's referred to as coppice - I believe that's the right term - then you can select particular stems which you think might be the best ones or the straight ones and you can grow hardwood back fairly quickly.
So we definitely may want to look at the use of pesticides in softwood stands or cutovers. If we abandon clear-cutting, we would abandon pesticides. But if the process is going to be to clear-cut and Mr. Langille talked about selection harvesting, which I think is a very good move, that would probably promote the use of hardwoods. Mr. Taggart talked about, actually, the ability to release hardwood and the value that it will grow. That's what we're talking about is harvesting in the form of a treatment that would promote the growth of those stands, so that when you leave the stand, you can say this is better off than it was when we entered it.
It might be interesting, I think - we talked about the notion that governments try to create jobs and that was the point in allocating funds to Savoie/Dickson, I think Ms. Massey said $1 million but I think as far as the province is concerned, it was $100,000. Governments like to try to promote jobs. I think what maybe would be in the best interests of the people of Nova Scotia is for their government to look at what other people do in those jurisdictions. In other words, if there are flooring plants and whatever that are in New Brunswick, then say, how can we get Nova Scotians, we're willing to put some money to Nova Scotians who are willing to take this on rather than encourage someone from away to come to the province and give them funding. It is not a big stretch to see what people do in other jurisdictions and then apply some help to the people who are already trying to do that here and see if we can give them a hand up to accelerate their business.
I'm not trying to end discussion because we do have a few minutes left, but I just wanted to make sure that any other members, and I didn't want to jump in until it kind of looked as though most people had spoken. But I see Mr. Sampson, unless somebody else is interested in another comment (Interruptions) Mr. Sampson can speak and then Mr. Langille on his point.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Just to kind of sum up. You're talking about having a vision and if you were to gather some statistics, an old adage that one of my teachers taught me was that statistics don't lie, only the people that make them. So, if you kept your statistics where they could be scrutinized and nobody could cut them apart, and listed your number of companies, the number of employees, the amount of salaries that you put into the economy of Nova Scotia and the amount of benefits and taxes that all these companies combined put into the coffers of the province, that may open the eyes of some of the people in power and say, gee, it's a lot more than I thought. But when I hear from you and somebody else over there and from someone down in Cumberland or someone down at the other end, it's such a scatter-shot approach, it really doesn't have an effect. (Interruption) Like you say, so you
may kind of shock some people and they will say, holy jeepers, this really is a viable industry or whatever.
You were talking about the long-term effect. I don't know if you could survive long enough to do what I'm going to suggest. But you're talking about selective cutting and things like that, which is the only way that you can regenerate and you can keep the lots going forever, supposedly, but people buy stocks on the stock market and they invest, so if I paid $1 a stock for that little skinny stand right there with the little flower on the top of it, and the next year, it has gone up and as it grows, it becomes more valuable. So maybe you won't own that tree in the end, the stock market will own the tree but you will have the income from that while it's growing. The same as you buy stock, people buy gold and they buy gosh knows whatever on the stock market, that tree is a stock market value. If you can do that in some way, you could make money while you're selling the stock. Get somebody that's business oriented when you get organized. It is a big business and run it like a business and have investments as a business.
MR. TAGGART: I've seen a computer model on that investment, and an accountant could likely do wonders with that sort of thing, but I've seen a computer model on a growth chart of investment and you will never invest your money, unless you do it in BriEx or something like that and you get out in time. You will never invest your money and get it back like that, anyway, I shouldn't be talking but it's there, the growth is there.
MR. MARCHBANK: It's better than gold because gold doesn't grow, and trees do.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille.
MR. LANGILLE: I would like to clarify one thing. What I have been discussing here pertains to hardwood only, I'm not discussing softwood. I just wanted to make that clear.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Just for clarification, the BS that I said, that was basic stocks by the way. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: There is at least one other item that I think I would like to raise before the committee rises today, so if you gentlemen would like to make some concluding statements, it looks like all our members have asked what they wanted.
MR. MARCHBANK: I would like to thank each and every one of you very much for giving us your time, I hope we have been informative, and when you're dealing with these problems, some of this information will be useful to you. I have a little thing here I want to give to each one of the members. I have a little cheeseboard here for each one of you and every time you cut a piece of cheese on them I want you to think of the hardwood industry in Nova Scotia.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: While you are doing that, what I suggested to Finewood Flooring, my granddaughter is an excellent little step dancer and I said what you should do is put together a platform like this for her and everyone else, and put Finewood Flooring right into it, mould it together, and have one in every club. There is nothing any worse for a guest, when they go to dance in a club or in a school and a kid has to do a super step dance on a piece of carpet or an old plywood floor. They take this out with Finewood Flooring or your company name on it, they put it down complements of Joe's Lumber and they do their step dance on this, whether it's five by five or whatever.
MR. TAGGART: Two comments on that, one is Forest Insight of Marion Bridge, Cape Breton, they have as their logo on their boxes that get shipped all over the world, a picture of a ceilidh dancer - that is their logo. It works.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I told them that three years ago at UCCB.
MR. TAGGART: It works. To conclude, I just want to thank everybody for listening to me ramble. My brother and I operate a small, value-added company in Debert - we are very low-tech but it works for us. If ever any of you folks are in the area and you want to stop in, we would be more than happy to say hello, show you what we do, and try to explain a little bit better what our process is. (Interruption)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sampson, could you speak into the mic and then the committee will hear.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Sorry about that, Mr. Chairman, I thought we were kind of on the wind-down. I was just suggesting that possibly by March the House will sit again and they have about three months to get things together after the Christmas period and probably send something forward to the Legislature that could be discussed on the floor of the Legislature that might influence the province, or influence whatever, that might be helpful to you, rather than just leave today and say, we made a presentation and we never heard from them for another six years or something like that. It might work, it might not, I don't know, it's a suggestion that could be discussed.
MR. TAGGART: It will happen.
MR. CHAIRMAN: On behalf of the committee, I would like to say thank you very much. The information you presented certainly was useful to the committee. We hope that when our report for this committee is drafted, the government will make use of some of the information you provided today. They have members here on the committee and that's not to say that those of us who are not government members can't bend the ear of the minister or whoever to try to bring about some change in policy that benefits Nova Scotia entrepreneurs. So thank you very much.
[2:45 p.m. The committee recessed.]
[2:49 p.m. The committee reconvened.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Could I have the members' attention to the committee, please. Well, a couple of things, one is I would like to get the view of the committee, the Department of Environment and Labour tends to go through a process of changing environmental assessment regulations. There are individuals, who we will just refer to as stakeholders out there, who have an interest in this, but this is being done in-house. They would like to have an opportunity to be able to speak to any changes or to suggest changes to the regulations.
One thing that has come to me is the possibility of this committee having hearings to listen to what the public might want to say on this. Ms. Stevens has indicated that this committee can do whatever it wants in that regard, as long as the members of the committee agree to that. Now, I think the deadline for what the department is doing is January 4th, so that would mean that whatever we're going to do would have to happen prior to that. If there's two glitches to this it's that the committee may decide they don't want to do it, that would be number one, and number two would be that if we're going to advertise the hearings, then we don't have money to do that, so that would have to be a request to the Speaker as to whether or not they would provide the funding for that to occur.
So I guess before we go down that road, I would like to ask if the committee would be interested in allowing those hearings, for people to come in and speak to changes to environmental assessment regulations. Can I have a show of hands . . .
MR. COLWELL: Can I ask a question?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure you can.
MR. COLWELL: How does this tie into Natural Resources? How do you make the connection? I'm not saying I'm for it or against it, but how does it make the connection?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have to tell you that as far as I know there's no environmental committee, so what happens in the environment, certainly in lots of ways in Nova Scotia, would impact the resource sector, for sure. So this would seem like probably the only possible venue that would be available to hear anybody who has concerns in that regard. Mr. Dooks.
MR. WILLIAM DOOKS: Has the department not allowed for public input on any changes within the regulations?
MR. CHAIRMAN: To my understanding it's all in-house, they're not allowing for public input.
MR. DOOKS: Well, the first thing I think we should do is find out what the particulars are.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay.
MR. DOOKS: Usually if there are regulation changes or policy changes, there's some public input or there has been some type of mechanism put in there to hear from, at least, industry. Before I could take any stand on that, I would have to have that checked out.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have no problem with what you just said, it makes perfect sense. I guess what we need to know - we're probably not going to be in touch with one another to redo this tomorrow - is if there isn't any public consultation avenue in these discussions, is the committee interested, number one, in holding those hearings?
MR. DOOKS: How drastic are the changes? What are the changes? This is the point, I'm just saying . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: The department hasn't sent us the changes. I'm assuming that maybe they haven't even decided what they are. They're taking some time to draft them. The public would like to have input before they get drafted. If it's going to turn out that they're going to draft them and send them, it's going to be a little late to have public input after that. I guess what we want to know is, if the committee would see some value in allowing the public, and there are people who are interested in having some input in this, obviously they feel there's no avenue for them to do that within the department . . .
MR. DOOKS: May I? Has someone contacted you with a specific issue or just in a broad sense? Where is this topic . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: There wasn't a specific issue. I think someone has contacted our staff, and it was just a staff member who raised this to me. This seemed like the only possible avenue for public consultation, because there seemed to be none within the department. If there is some within the department, then this may be for naught. So I guess what I needed to know from you is, if there is not an avenue for public consultation, would the members of the committee be interested in carrying out that process, on changes to environmental assessment? I will listen to Ms. Massey first, then Mr. Langille.
MS. MASSEY: Well, I always find it's easier to just make a motion, then maybe somebody might second it, and then discuss it. So I would make a motion that the Resources Committee . . .
MR. LANGILLE: Well, you better speak to the motion first.
MS. MASSEY: Well, if you make a motion and then somebody seconds it - that the Resources Committee hold a venue for public consultation on the changes to the Environmental Assessment Act, if the government is not holding their own public consultation process.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I second it.
MS. MORA STEVENS (Legislative Committee Coordinator): Don't need it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Don't need it, okay.
MR. DOOKS: Bill, were you going to speak to the motion? Bill was in line next.
MR. LANGILLE: Well, speak to the motion, no, but I would like to speak.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.
MR. LANGILLE: First of all, I don't think there's been much discussion on this. Secondly, I think we have already laid out our agenda when we are meeting and who we are bringing in. To have this chucked at us, it is not our responsibility for that or mandate in this committee for that. To try to change things because somebody contacted one of your staff people, it's not our mandate to do that. We are the Resources Committee . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: We are mandated to do whatever we want, as long as the committee agrees. So that's all I can do. I can only present it to the committee and ask whether you agree. So Ms. Massey has made the motion. If the committee votes against this, then the committee has voted against it. I'm not trying to twist anybody's arm. This committee doesn't allow for that, which is a good thing.
MS. MASSEY: May I speak to my motion now?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.
MS. MASSEY: Unless somebody else wants to . . .
MR. HINES: I just have a comment, if I can. There's nothing wrong with the suggestion that we should discuss environmental change and so on but it's pretty hard to put a discussion out there to the public in any form when you have areas as broad as environmental assessment. What do we put on the table for discussion, just environmental assessment? You would be forever and a day hearing all the public on all the environmental assessment issues that may surface. So if we can't get more direction from the department as to where they are making changes, they might be making changes and we really don't have
anything to put out there for discussion other than environmental assessment as a global entity.
MR. DOOKS: I'm not going to support the motion in respect of not knowing what I'm supporting because we do have to work with departmental people and if there was some issue, maybe we should have contacted the department for some explanation. It's just too broad to support because we don't know what's going on.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaudet.
MR. GAUDET: Mr. Chairman, I think there is a process here. I think if there are any interested parties out there throughout this province, they certainly have an opportunity to contact the chairman, to contact the members to raise this at the committee level. I guess finding myself in this position that I don't know what I'm agreeing to or what are the details, I think it is very difficult. I think what I would suggest is that maybe whoever it was who was contacted, if they could provide us with some information, maybe at another meeting. You know, if there is a January 4th deadline, it doesn't mean that we can't look at environmental regulations or whatever it may be down the road. As you said, this committee can pretty well decide what to do on its own. So I think for the record, not having enough information today it is practically impossible to really get involved in this matter.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey, did you want to . . .
MS. MASSEY: I haven't been on these committees before but I certainly - and this is just my own point of view - don't see a problem just bringing people in and the topic is environmental assessment. Now whether they want to talk about what they think is good about the process that is occurring now or what is bad about the process or what they think could be added to it, I mean we just heard from two gentlemen that obviously there is a process that is not working for them, not directly with the environmental assessment part of it but we are talking about clear-cutting, these sorts of things and how does clear-cutting occur. It's that whole process that is meshed in there and this is the Resources Committee, those are topics which are resources.
We're always saying, in all three Parties - I believe we're always saying - we should consult with people and if there is a short timeline, this would just maybe create an opportunity for folks to come in and discuss their point of view on that topic, environmental assessment. It's been in the news a lot lately and it's a topic that is timely, I believe. So from my point of view, I don't see a problem with it.
[3:00 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we should hear from the committee as far as a vote on the motion and that would probably . . .
MS. MASSEY: Can I have a recorded vote?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure. Would you read your motion, again, please?
MS. MASSEY: That the Resources Committee hold a venue for public consultation on the changes to the Environmental Assessment Act, if the government is not holding their own public process, for consultation.
MR. GAUDET: If the government?
MS. MASSEY: If they're not holding a public consultation process between now and when the changes would occur, that we could have a little thing here.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Hearings.
MR. DOOKS: There would be no such thing as a little thing. I appreciate the motion, the interest in the motion, but when you're talking environmental assessment, it is so very broad, it can go, as a matter of fact, and would go on for days and days, because you would not be able to limit debate. Some may come in, they would line up, maybe 30 people would line up with a 15-minute presentation, there may be 30 more. I'm just wondering, is this the venue for that or if it is, then at another time when we have the appropriate information to base our decision on then that process could possibly be very positive. I would prefer that you withdraw your motion until we investigated this issue and, as my colleague across the way said, we can bring environmental issues here at any time and make recommendations to changes in legislation or whatever. I just think its premature, that's all.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we should have a vote on this.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I just have to pass on my opinion. There are no specifics. The government could actually be tightening up loose ends and doing some positive changes to the environmental assessment. We seem to be assuming that they're doing negative things. Without any specifics or any flags being raised at the changes, I can't support it, because as I've said, I don't know what I'm supporting.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good. Certainly, the comments are sensible enough. I want the members to know the view with which this was brought was that the indication is that the government wasn't having public input into this. So, that's the basis on which I brought it to the committee. So, can we vote on the motion and then we will know where we stand on it.
YEAS NAYS
Ms. Massey Mr. Gerald Sampson
Mr. MacDonell Mr. Gaudet
Mr. Parker
Mr. Colwell
Mr. Langille
Mr. Hines
Mr. Dooks
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think the answer is Nay on that. (Interruptions)
AN HON. MEMBER: Was it close?
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, it wasn't particularly close.
There is another agenda item for the committee.
MS. STEVENS: There was, under Committee Business/Agenda Items. I sent a note as to why we weren't having in the St. Ann's Bay Mussel Farm and why we had to delay the week. From what I understand, they're still waiting for that federal court decision, it has not come down as of yet.
There were two items that had been left on the agenda that were approved. Why I have put tentative for the Nova Scotia Woodlot Owners is it's better if they're a little later. The other item that was suggested is officials from Economic Development, Nova Scotia Business Inc. and the Department of Natural Resources concerning sort of the industry and Northern Lumber, Savoie/Dickson and all those things, it sounds as if the committee would almost prefer that next so they can sort of have a follow-up to this meeting and then go to the woodlot owners, because they are right now still assessing their damages from Hurricane Juan. So that might be even better.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think Mr. Langille has a comment.
MR. LANGILLE: When you're talking about Nova Scotia Business Inc., Economic Development and Natural Resources, are you saying, lump them all together and bring them in together?
MS. STEVENS: It was officials from those various government departments to talk about issues such as the Savoie/Dickson loan, Northern Lumber Inc. and the state of the policies. So it was actually you who brought it up to bring in government officials concerning those policies.
MR. LANGILLE: But I'm asking would it be wise to try to bring them all in together? I can see Economic Development and Nova Scotia Business Inc. in one presentation but I can't see Natural Resources lumped in with them, because they have entirely different agendas.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I can speak. I have to say that it may be, I'm just thinking that two hours may be particularly tight for those three groups to make a presentation but my thought is that definitely, when we look at Crown land policy, Natural Resources is key to that. The question is if we don't bring these in together, if we split them, where is somebody going to get bumped in light of what we presently have allowed for time. Can you give us any idea of that, Mora?
MS. STEVENS: Since we are meeting once a month, our next meeting would be January 27th and it is easy enough to split. This just happened to be approved as a bulk item, to have government officials, that's why it ends up this way. It is certainly up to the committee to determine what groups they would like to have in together, to speak on what specifics. It could easily be Economic Development and Nova Scotia Business Inc. in January and in February, Natural Resources to follow up and that way they get to see what each group has said, and then it would be March for the woodlot owners.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille, this was your suggestion to the committee previously so if you would like to give us some direction on what you would like to see happen with this and I think, we probably aren't going to have a problem.
MR. LANGILLE: I agree that they all should be brought in but it's just three together . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, if Nova Scotia Business Inc. and Economic Development came in at our next meeting, would that be fine by you?
MR. LANGILLE: Sure, I don't have a problem with that. I just don't see how, in two hours, you could do it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed?
It is agreed.
It is six or seven minutes after 3:00 o'clock. Unless any other members have something further. All the compliments of the season, since we won't see you.
MR. COLWELL: I move adjournment.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 3:07 p.m.]