French is in decline in the largest cities of northern Ontario. But a new wind seems to be blowing through Timmins since the appointment, in October 2022, of a first Franco-Ontarian mayor. The duty went there to take stock of the state of French in the city with a heart of gold, overtaken by numerous crises.
At the forefront of the biomass industry, Quebec has become an essential commercial partner in this increasingly popular energy sector. To the point where businesses in Ontario feel obliged to become French-speaking so as not to miss business opportunities.
The president and founder of Commercial Bioenergy, Robert Manseau, says he lost tens of thousands of dollars because his employees were unilingual English speakers. About two years ago, the company won a call for projects from the Société des establishments de plein air du Québec, SEPAQ, which wanted to use biomass to power the Chic-Chocs mountain inn, in Gaspésie.
The increasingly fashionable transformation of organic matter into heat or electricity is considered a green substitute for the use of fossil fuels, even if it emits a notable amount of greenhouse gases.
“We won this competition, then we worked with the government, and one of the requirements they placed on us was that we had to have a Quebec company. So, we created a Quebec company solely for this project, says Mr. Manseau. We would never have been able to do this project with the Quebec government if management had been solely English-speaking. »
But its unilingual English-speaking employees struggled to communicate with Quebec engineers. ” It did not work. The employees didn’t understand, they bought bad things. This increased the implementation period and the costs of the project,” laments the entrepreneur.
He then understood “that the linguistic challenge was so severe” that changes were necessary. “That was a pretty important lesson. Then, that’s why for a couple of months, I’ve been requiring that everyone needs to take French classes. Then new employees must be bilingual. […] No choice. It takes a lot of people away from me, but the people who come in give us more capacity to operate and exploit the market. »
Quebec at the forefront
Mr. Manseau says he is not the only biomass entrepreneur to have had to open a head office in Quebec, the “majority” of his competitors perceiving the province as an essential commercial partner. “We want to participate in the coming wave. Quebec is at the forefront — it is ahead of everyone, even visionary. »
“For me, it was essential that we be established in Quebec for long-term operations,” says the man who founded his company five years ago.
Forest bioenergy represents 6% of the energy consumed in Quebec, but it “has been in place for years in Europe,” explains Mr. Manseau. “My European partners come here, then they say we’re crazy, because they see all the wood we have, and then it stays on the ground. They wonder why we haven’t jumped in until now, but it’s just that we’ve been slow. »
Inspired by his colleagues across the Atlantic, he decided to import European technologies to Canada with more modest needs which allow him to work in smaller communities. Kettles in which wood pellets are burned to generate energy do not require complex installation, he says. “Our power plants are a container 40 feet, no more complicated than that. Then we connect it to hydraulic systems, heaters already in place; hot water passes through it, then it transfers the heat. »
An ideal type of installation for more remote or difficult-to-access places, assures Mr. Manseau. Commercial bioenergy is working in particular to make an indigenous reserve on the North Shore self-sufficient in energy, which no longer wants to depend on expensive propane. “They will be able to harvest their own wood, [de] sell the most important recovery, and the waste returns to others to make their energy. »
The company is also working on a social housing project in Timmins heated with biomass.
Compensate for the departure of paper makers
Beyond the idea of encouraging the energy independence of communities, this use of forest residues seems essential to him in a context of closure of many paper mills – factories which are usually the main buyers of wood residues.
“When a tree is cut down, probably 15 to 20% of that tree remains in the forest,” explains Mr. Manseau. At the factory, the bark is removed, and the lumber is kept. “When we had a lot of paper mills, all this volume of biomass ended up making paper. But the paper industry is falling,” he laments, referring in particular to the closure, in the fall of 2023, of a large pulp and paper factory in Espanola, in the Sudbury district.
Deprived of their main buyer of wood residue, sawmills are seeing their stock of chips increase so significantly that they “are no longer able to operate,” says Mr. Manseau.
The entrepreneur believes that governments now have no choice “to consider the use of this raw material to ensure that the forest industry is sustainable”. “I am investing a lot, a lot in that future. Then I feel quite comfortable [avec l’idée] that market principles will work for us. »
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.