"The centre has been promised three times by the Provincial Government"

Hmmm, how many times did they promise they weren't going to sell BC Rail?

“Right now there is not the technology, they do not get the training, so, you could go about a couple of ways.”

I was really hoping that the Wood Innovation and Design Centre would be about much more than building bigger buildings with wood.

As Pat said, the are already building bigger buildings with wood. The Austrians have been working on the Cross Lamination Timber (CLT). It is no longer a mystery of how to do it. It is not much different than building with precast concrete panels. The key of all those systems has been the connections. That is where the patent potentials are as far as I understand from working with systems buildings back in the early 1970s when it was starting to fade away in North America. The Europeans were large users of the technique brought on by the shortage of labour after the war years when there were massive building projects. In Canada, much of the technical knowledge resided at the University of Montreal in those days.

Structural engineers basically already have much of the knowledge to do this kind of design. The little they do not know can be learned from visiting Plants in Austria, Finland, Sweden that are making the panels and provide the static computer programs and connection details to put the lego blocks together.

The big thing that is missing? No one is making the panels in Canada to the best of my knowledge. As with concrete panels, there is a radius from the plant within which it is economical to ship the material. Therefore the plant needs to be close to a large population base. If we had the panels, and if there was an incentive to use them, the building owners, architects and engineers would start to slowly use them. Both architects and engineers, as well as most building owners are conservative thinkers because they have to make sure that they are not stuck with problems down the road such as those encountered with the leaky condo systems which resulted in too many owners and design professionals taking chances with new types of insulation and vapour barrier systems as well as going crazy with sloped glazing systems that were unfamiliar.

Yes, we need another engineering school in BC. Yes, it should be in the northern part of the province. No, the Wood Innovation Centre should not dwell only on BIGGER wood buildings. It should deal with BETTER wood building technology.

CLT from Finland and Sweden
http://www.clt.info/index.php?id=46&L=2 They produce 6.9 million m3 of sawn wood products, half of which is value added such as the CLT panels … not shabby when compared to BC.

Watch a two storey panel building going up ..
http://www.clt.info/index.php?id=119&L=2

An almost 3 year old article about CLT
http://www.timber-building.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/12/Concrete_evidence.html
This is the company that “invented” the technology
http://klh.at/index.php?id=161&L=3

Video …. Precision construction, more like cabinetmakers than carpenters. I think there will be a greater need to train carpenters to do this kind of work than engineers. http://www.klh.at/home-klh/klh-montagefilm.html?L=3

I agree gus. Let's get away from being followers and let's be leaders. If we are just copying what has already been done elsewhere, are we really being "innovative"? Are we really "designing" anything?

Why not use the Wood Innovation and Design Centre as a catalyst for developing brand new products and technologies? Forget about making some existing product marginally better, let's be honest about the resources we have to work with, let's be honest about what the markets could demand and let's dump R&D money into this facility to develop cutting edge products and technologies so that we can get away from our current industry base (which for the most part is based on products that haven't changed all that much since the early 1900's) and develop it into something that has a fighting chance of being around 25 years from now and beyond.

i THINK IT IS GREAT, BUT HOW ABOUT A INDUSTRY TO MANUFACTURE IT IN THE North.

Someone should tell Pat that the expression **Pull the Pin** means to end a Relationship, Project, Program, or the like, so when he says that after the leadership campaign they should be able to **pull the pin** very quickly, he is saying they will end it.

Why do we need this project at all. Are we going to go into the business of laminating lumber. What will we use, beetle killed pine, spruce?? I doubt if we have any amount of fir left in this part of the Country. Sounds like another **White Elephant** project to me.

If Pat wants to give us more **Bang for our tax dollar** then he should ensure that this project does not go ahead, and give us a tax break instead.

I tend to agree with Palopu here. There are already numerous places where 'wood innovation and design' research takes place. Both in this country, and abroad.

And a lot of what has already been developed in those labs would be as applicable to northern species as to other conifers elsewhere. Only, unfortunately, a great deal of that reasearch has never led to successful commercial application anywhere.

This project is likely to be only another excuse for distributing 'incomes' in the present. Ones that'll only add to our already unrepayable overall debt load in the future.

I'd opt for a tax break anyday.
Give people a chance to better match their disposable incomes to what they already owe.

You can certainly see why governments the world over want to switch from taxing 'incomes' to taxing 'consumption'. An Income Tax is only imposed on what you earn. A Consumption Tax, like the HST, taxes your spending ~ not only from 'earnings' but also from 'borrowings'.

Lets get our priorities straight for a change. If there was an actual Consumer demand for new and innovative wood products ~ those 'value-added' items everyone's always all for making ~ you can rest assured someone will already be making them, so long as their 'costs' can be fully recovered in 'price', and there's enough of an inducement in profit to make the exercise worthwhile. If that can't be achieved, then just WHERE has any 'value' been 'added'?

In employment, you say? You could do the same thing with a piece of bare earth and a pick and shovel. Have everyone dig a hole, and then fill it in again. And that'll make just as much (little) sense as manufacturing new and innovative wood products that don't pay.

If we truly want to be 'innovative' in increasing the sales of such products, then lets turn our attention to making sure that if there IS an ACTUAL Consumer demand for such items, it be made an EFFECTIVE demand.

If there was an actual Consumer demand for new and innovative wood products ~ those 'value-added' items everyone's always all for making ~ you can rest assured someone will already be making them,

Well theres a thought when trying to think outside of the box.

If the idea was any good someone would have thought of it already. Wonder if Bill Gates thought like that?

Exactly red2b!

Some people and some companies are innovators and they create and drive the demand for new products. Others, like what we see allot of in Canada, are just reactionary. If we want to develop new industries, cutting edge products, etc., we have to do what that requires. Generally speaking, that doesn't mean sitting around waiting for the Germans or someone else to think of it first and then thinking "gee, why didn't we think of that?".

For the most part, we think money spent on R&D is a waste and the innovators think of it as what it really is, an investment. It would be interesting to look at organizations like Apple, Microsoft, 3M, Research in Motion, Toyota, etc., and compare their R&D as a percentage of their sales to some of the big companies in our area and country. I'm sure the results would be very interesting.

However Bill Gates thinks, there first has to be a 'consumer demand' for the product he's offering if he's going to be successful making it.

True, that demand might not be evident until the product is introduced, and the public becomes aware of it and its potential, and decides it's something they want.

But 'wood products' aren't quite the same as 'computer technology'. For one thing, the former has been around as long as man has known how to utilise timber.

For another, so far as 'sawn' woood products are concerned, the per capita consumption of same peaked about 1900, and has been in constant decline ever since.

We do use more 'sawn' wood products by volume now than we did then, but only because there are a lot more people now than there were then.

Just look at the number of common items that were once made out of wood that no longer are found anywhere. Everything from creosoted 12x12x1' 'paving blocks', a staple item in the 1920's for hard surfacing city streets, to the ubiquitous wooden-spool that sewing thread was wound onto.

And how many wooden matches and wooden clothes pegs do we see today compared to years gone by? Box shook was once a mainstay of many a BC southern Interior mill. Who ships fruit in wooden boxes nowadays? Or sides a house with shiplap? Not that it isn't a better product than OSB, but you can't produce it as cheaply, and the labour cost involved in installing it is simply not competitive.

If you look at the number of new 'discoveries' that various forest products labs have come-up with already, worldwide ~ and these are both government funded labs as well as those developed and funded entirely 'in house' by various forest products companies ~ there are already a huge number of potential uses for wood on the books. Most of which have never met any commercial application whatsoever in spite of often considerable effort and expense made in trying to introduce them.

There have also been some limited successes, no one is denying that. But to believe that there's going to be some miraculous break-through in making new, profitable wood products from having another Wood Innovation Centre, and these will compare to the wares of Gates' Microsoft, is dreaming in technicolour.

I'll still take the tax break, thank you very much. If enough people got that, there's bound to be more demand for existing wood products, and maybe even some new ones.

Remember "Northern Telecom", NMG. The one time darling of Bay Street, the Canadian Company that was going to lead the world in telecommunications technology? It went the way of many other producers who'd invested heavily in R&D, but seemed to forget, somewhere along the line, there has to be some actual customers at the end of the process. Ones who can, and will, fork over the requisite payment for what's being offered. And on a sufficiently ongoing basis to make that R&D all worthwhile, and enable it to keep going.

We would be far further ahead if we directed our R&D efforts towards reforming a fatally flawed 'financial' system. One that won't currently allow ACTUAL Consumer demand, where often in fact it really does exist, and, save for want of 'money', could very easily otherwise be fully satiated, to always be an EFFECTIVE demand.

Considering that Pat Bell works for a government that will do just about anything to save it's butt,we should be very careful about what we accept as the truth from any Liberal politician.
Everything they say is going to be positve right now.
The old "tell 'em what they want to hear" format.
Buyer beware.

All good points socredible, however, this isn't "NMG's backyard wood planks and duck decoys" that we're talking about here.

Aren't natural resources still the "backbone" of the Canadian economy? If so, isn't forestry a big part of that? If it is, then surely you must conclude that BC plays a significant role in that sector and by default, that companies like Canfor should be industry "leaders" when it comes to driving demand for new products, reacting to external forces in regards to what is going on, developing new processes and techniques to constantly be improving their product (so that they can compete by offering highly specialized product as opposed to a run of the mill 2x4 that anyone can make if the have access to the raw materials, etc.).

You see this all the time with successful industry leaders in their particular sector. They see the external threats and they don't rest on their laurels. For the most part, we don't see any of this.

So I guess from my point of view, it's "put up or shut up time". We either make a legitmate effort to become a true industry and technological leader in mature industries like forestry, or perhaps it's time to just say "face it folks we've got nothing, this industry is not sustainable over the long term the way it currently is (because I don't think it is) and it's time to start preparing for our eventual demise". To be perfectly honest, I think we should do the former and have a contingency plan in place for the latter.

I do agree with many people though and that is in regards to the fact that we don't need Pat Bell just running around saying how great everything will be. I'm certainly not a "doom and gloomer" but at some point there has to be some honest and frank dialogue with the "leaders" in this Province about what is facing the industry and how and if we can cope with them. The external threats to its future viability are not make believe.

Well said NMG!

I agree, Andy, what NMG is saying is "well said". But that still doesn't change the FACT that under the current overall financial conventions in which we operate much of what could be done 'physically', maybe even should be done in that way, in many instances, currently still can't be done 'financially'.

Even leaving that macro-economic perspective aside, and just looking at the issues on a more micro-economic, case-by-case, individual level, there seem to be insurmountable obstacles. Ones that are akin to someone continually trying to re-invent the wheel in the belief they can somehow further perfect principles that have already been perfected.

It is, for instance, still more cost effective to saw lodgepole pine into 2x4 studs, dry, plane, and package them, than to grind an equivalent amount of fibre up into fine sawdust, dry it, mix it with a resinous glue, and extrude it through a set of dies into the shape of a 2x4 stud, or any other shape you like.

We don't need to re-invent doing something like that. The Europeans already make such products from a fibre base whose standard is sub-stud log. And eventually, as our fibre base continues to decline in quality here, someone will do the same thing. Is it better? In some ways, yes. In others, no.

Their big problem there at the moment is cost, and now they increasingly can't compete with bio-mass powered electric and heat generators, who are scooping their previously cheap fibre source and putting it through a far cheaper process.

To make an albeit cheaper selling product,wood pellets or briquettes, but ones that sell in far greater volume into a far more certain market.

In essence, that is the 'problem' with all attempts at 'value-adding'. The manufacture of 'sawn' wood products, to a far greater extent than with the manufacture of most other products, is a process of separation.

In this it's like the diamond industry ~ you don't necessarily get 'more' for the finished product from doing 'more' to it. This seems to be a source of great confusion to many people, who hold firmly to the ideology that 'value' is always increased by adding more 'cost' (labour cost, actually), to any product.

If you took a large raw diamond, the type of gemstone the Hope diamond, say, or some of those large rocks in the British crown jewels were fashioned from, and cut that stone into four smaller ones, the work and wages of the diamond cutters may well be multiplied four times. They have to facet and finish four stones instead of one, and that takes longer. But at the end of the process do the four finished smaller stones now add up to the value of one finished big one?

Like with many things, we are at cross-purposes in our attempts to develop and produce new and innovative, and labour-intensive, wood products. We'll likely only end up trying to 'commoditise' what are 'specialties', and in the process destroy the ability of either to ever pay.