May 8, 2017 Quebec City Natural Resources Canada

Developing new products and expanding our markets will strengthen Canada’s forest sector, create new jobs and benefit the communities that rely on the forest industry.

Today, the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, on behalf of the Honourable Jim Carr, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, attended the capping ceremony for project Origine, a tall wood construction project in Quebec City’s Pointe-aux-Lièvres eco-district.

The tallest wood-constructed condominium in North America, project Origine includes a 12-storey wood structure on top of a one-storey concrete podium, and stores 2,065 tonnes of carbon in its wood. The 41-metre tall condominium uses cross-laminated timber as its primary building material, a technology that greatly increases the technical limits for tall wood construction.

Through Natural Resources Canada’s Tall Wood Building Demonstration Initiative, over $1.2 million in funding was provided to this project, undertaken by the project developers, the NEB Consortium. The initiative is part of the Government of Canada's strategy to help expand the North American market for Canadian wood products by encouraging the use of wood in construction in mid- and high-rise buildings, helping Canada’s forest industry to sustain hundreds of thousands of good, middle-class jobs in communities across our country.

In this year’s budget, an additional $40 million was dedicated to increasing wood use in Canada. These funds will lead to further tall wood demonstration projects, advanced training and education for practitioners designing wood buildings and continued support for code changes to ensure a level playing field for wood in high-rise construction. This will help to maintain Canada’s global leadership in the development of innovative wood buildings and other infrastructure.



Natural Resources Canada developed the Tall Wood Buildings Demonstration Initiative in collaboration with the Canadian Wood Council to test and demonstrate the use of wood in larger and taller wood buildings.

The importance of these efforts was made clear again last month when the U.S. Department of Commerce announced unfair and punitive duties on Canadian softwood lumber imports. It is why Minister Duclos was in the U.K. and continental Europe last month as part of the Government of Canada’s overarching strategy to target new markets around the globe in a concerted effort to enhance trade and market diversification for Canadian wood and wood products as part of the clean-growth economy.