Technology and the Canadian Forest-Product Industries ... - ArtSites

closely involved in the establishment of Paprican five decades ago,but its importance to the organization is much less than to Feric orForintek. Feric was the result of an amalgamation, in the early 1970s,of part of the Canadian Forestry Service (CFS) and the forestry groupof Paprican; government and industry financing are of equal importance.Forintek was created by the "privatization" of the governmentrunWestern Forest Product Laboratories and Eastern Forest ProductLaboratories (the WFPL and EFPL) in 1979,but still obtains more fundingfrom government than from industry. Although Paprican, Forintek,and Feric represent cooperative research ventures between industryand government (and in some respects, universities) their researchpriorities are strongly influenced by representatives from industry. Inthis sense, they function like conventional industry associationlaboratories.Paprican and Forintek, and indirectly Feric, have their origins ingovernment-owned and -operated forest-product laboratories. Forexample, Paprican, the oldest of the three organizations, originated inthe Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) set up by the Dominion Governmentin 1913 on McGill campus in Montreal. It focused on timbertesting and physics, wood preservation and distillation, and pulp andpaper.I' The latter activity was thought to be considerably underfunded,however, and lobbying efforts were made to establish a separatecentre for pulp and paper. Eventually an agreement was reachedbetween the government, industry (as represented by the CanadianPulp and Paper Association), and McGill University. The latter waschosen as the location of the existing FPL, because it had suitablefacilities, basic research was to be emphasized, and because it held abequest of $200 000, which became available in 1925 and which McGilldecided to use to establish a Department of Industrial and CelluloseChemistry. The federal government also played a key role in thecreation of Paprican: over four years, 1925-28 it provided $36 000 ayear, on condition business contributed $20 000 a year." Subsequently,the government increased its contribution to about $100000 a yearuntil the mid-1950s when annual grants for operating requirementswere replaced by a capital grant in the form of the Pointe Clairefacility. Similarly, the federal government provided Paprican with itsrecently established Vancouver facility.Feric began operations in 1975 and was essentially a spin-offfromPaprican. It replaced the latter's woodland section, made up of a silviculturalgroup and a logging group, which was disbanded in 1971.Feric's mandate relates to wood harvesting, but in practice its R&Dhas expanded to embrace reforestation and tree planting.36