Quebec offers new incentives to boost lumber use
The Quebec government says it will invest $16 million over six years to increase lumber use in construction, Natural Resouces Minister Claude Béchard said.
The government is hoping to development expertise in the industry that will help wood compete with steel and concrete, Béchard said Wednesday.
"What we announced today will roughly triple the use of wood that we now use in construction in Quebec," he said.
The government's goal is to increase the use of wood in construction to about 360 million board feet by 2014. (A board foot is a unit of measurement used in the lumber industry that represents the volume of a piece of lumber that is one foot wide, one foot long and one inch thick.)
Increased wood use in buildings would also cut the annual production of greenhouse gases by 600,000 tonnes, he noted.
He said that the cost of using wood in the construction of buildings is equivalent to that of steel and concrete.
Béchard explained that the use of lumber in construction projects seems lower now because builders lack resources, such as engineering software, designed for this material although it abounds for the others.
"If you want to make a construction in steel, you will have all the tools, all the programs for the architects [and] for the engineers to be able to build easily and fast. If you want to make it in wood, that just [doesn't] exist — so we have to develop those kinds of tools," he said.
Quebec architects are interested in building with wood, but there's a lack of expertise and specialized materials in the province, said Gilles Brunette, manager of the composite wood products department at Forintek Canada in Quebec City.
There is a "lack of tools for the engineers and designers, also a lack of skilled work force to build and use wood," and the industry will have to catch up before wood becomes a favoured building material, Brunette added.
The provincial government won't bring in minimum thresholds on wood use in public building projects, but the natural fibre will be "emphasized" in all public works.
The incentive program respects the North American Free Trade Agreement and will not be perceived as a subsidy for timber workers, Béchard said.
The program was first proposed during a provincial forestry summit last December.
With files from the Canadian Press
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