Government Operations Committee on April 18th, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's great. Thank you very much.

Next we'll go back to our second round of questioning.

We have Linda Duncan, for the NDP.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

I'd like to follow up on my initial question, and that is the role given to Public Works under the sustainable development strategy to monitor efforts by the government departments on energy efficiency. I'm wondering, if you have been monitoring, what kinds of implications there are for the various government departments and agencies because of the priority for deficit reduction. Has that had an impact on having to drag or extend out the timeline in trying to achieve reduced energy?

[Robert Laframboise]

Actually, we haven't had any impact as such. We have been receiving reports back from departments. We have their engagement; they've been present at the different committee meetings. For the most part, all of the 27 departments have been attending the ADM and DG level committees, so I have no sense of that being an impediment in reporting back.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I noticed in one of the reports I was reading that thus far the main ability to reduce energy is simply because of staff cuts, that you're not providing as much space to employees. I would be interested to see an analysis of that in the next report on the sustainable development strategy.

Did you want to add to that?

[John McBain]

Yes, if I could. It's an interesting situation, because under the budget announcements we will be reducing the amount of floor space that we occupy and, through the introduction of our Workplace 2.0 initiative, we will be increasing the density. So building energy consumption, as you can imagine, for cooling in the summer and the operation of elevators and escalators will actually be increasing. You may look at a building trend data over five years and ask what happened, because their energy consumption's gone up despite various initiatives, but the density of the buildings will be greatly increased. Overall our footprint will be less, so our total consumption will be less.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

In theory. I'll be interested to see what the report says.

You spoke about new building purchases. As I understand, the government has just bought or is buying Carling campus, and Terrasses de la Chaudière, I think, is under negotiation. When the government is negotiating the purchase of new buildings, how significant a factor is the energy efficiency, and are you imposing obligations on the vendor to upgrade energy efficiency as a condition of purchase?

[John McBain]

I'll speak to those two specific examples. Les Terrasses de la Chaudière is a lease purchase contract signed in 1977 that gave the opportunity for the crown to purchase it in 2013. We exercised that right. There was no negotiation in terms of that. As you can imagine, the contract that was set in 1977 didn't include energy efficiency, so that one was exercised in option of a particular property.

The Nortel campus that we acquired was purchased on the basis of real estate opportunity and was done effectively through a multiple round of an auction process. The negotiation there was simply to pay as low as we could for taxpayer interest.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

But my point is, it doesn't sound like energy efficiency was a big factor then. In both cases other factors prevailed. Presumably for those very dated facilities there's going to be a major cost for energy retrofitting. I'm quite familiar with Chaudière and I would think that would be a challenge.

I have one last quick question. Some years back, I think it was when Jim Prentice was the environment minister, we began a U.S.-Canada clean energy dialogue. I wonder if, as part of that clean energy dialogue, either NRCan or Public Works has been engaged with U.S. officials on exchanging information, ideas, and innovations in energy efficiency in government buildings.

[Geoff Munro]

The simple answer is yes. We do collaborate very closely with the DOE at the level of a program/policy comparison conversation. We also collaborate at the laboratory level with the national lab system in the States as it relates to our own efforts to improve an understanding, develop technology, etc. There is a tight collaboration through the CED.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Have there been specific learnings that you've been able to adopt to improve our energy efficiency in our government facilities?

[Geoff Munro]

Again the answer is yes. Whether we've learned from them or they've learned from us, or it's one plus one equals two and a half or three, I'd have to go back into the specifics to provide you an explicit example. But there's no question that we do work closely with them.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It's useful.

[Geoff Munro]

It is useful. It adds value, correct.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Braid]

Those were good questions to conclude on. Thank you very much.

For our next questioner, we go to Ron Cannan.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll split my time with the hardest working member, the one from Okanagan—Coquihalla, Mr. Albas. I'm from Kelowna—Lake Country. We're neighbours in the Okanagan Valley, where there are 2,000 hours plus of sunlight a year. So solar is a big aspect helping our alternative energy sources, and there's also geothermal and other initiatives.

One question that was brought to my attention is what our federal government has been doing to use alternative energy sources on federal properties on first nations communities. It's very expensive to heat with the costs of diesel. Are we incorporating alternative energy sources in the construction of first nation community facilities?

[John McBain]

From the PWGSC point of view, I am not aware of any of those initiatives. That would be led by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. That would be part of their mandate. They would turn to us as an optional service provider if they so chose. To my knowledge, we're not involved in projects of that nature.

I'm not saying it's not happening.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

So there's no cross-pollination or sharing of best practices between Public Works and Aboriginal Affairs?

[John McBain]

To my knowledge, as I said, I'm not aware of projects in which they've involved us in those areas.

I don't know, Geoff, if NRCAN has been consulted on them, but we have not been a service provider to them in that respect.

[Geoff Munro]

Our relationship with them tends to be project specific. It's not a broad spectrum operational implementation program design, but rather about recognizing that a number of reserves are off-grid, particularly in the north, and if you go up to the high Arctic even more so. The cost to maintain fly-in, diesel-generated power is probably the worst not only from a cost perspective but indeed from a GHG perspective as well.

We are working with a number of examples. We've got district heating examples and we've got hybrid systems using wind energy storage to offset a micro-grid or a diesel-generated opportunity. One specific example that we're just beginning to work on in an explicit way is the polar continental shelf facility in Resolute. It's a government-owned facility and there's been an expansion of the facility as a function of the work we do in managing the logistics of high Arctic research. DND uses it in the dead of winter as a training facility. It works with the small community of Resolute itself. We're looking at how we can enhance the energy efficiency and reduce the fly-in or sealift diesel costs.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

It's encouraging that you're having some dialogue there. I appreciate your appearance here again. You've brought some good suggestions about what we're doing, especially within the Ottawa precinct with the federal buildings here. It's encouraging that we can share those good building practices and knowledge with other departments.

My second question—and I know that Mr. McCallum was interested in this and some of us heard about it at the last committee—is about the adoption of the 2011 building standards. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the testimony at the committee. We had witnesses on Tuesday pointing out that one of the things the federal government could do would be to adopt the 2011 building standards and have some stability across Canada. I don't know if anybody would like to comment on that.

[Carol Buckley]

Thank you for the question.

I believe the federal government has a higher goal for new buildings, namely LEED gold for new buildings. That's beyond the requirements of the national energy code of Canada for buildings. We have led the effort and now the adoption in all provinces and territories, except one, of that higher standard of building performance. I think it's a very successful result of federal-provincial collaboration, which is open for the federal government to adopt and adapt. But our own policy would take you to higher performance standards in terms of energy and environmental....

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Braid]

Thank you.

Mr. Albas, your friend and colleague has left you with one minute.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

It's an important minute, though.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

All right. Thank you. I appreciate the testimony today.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to the witnesses, from looking at the research that I've seen, from the FBI and the 19% reductions in energy use in the past 10 years, the updates, and the building code, I get the sense that Canada has...any maybe it's because of our geography and because we have a relatively a cooler climate in some cases.... But it seems to me that the whole idea of leadership that was brought up is more top of mind.

It seems that to me we've become quite mature in the use of this kind of technology and spreading it out, so that maybe even our own industry doesn't necessarily recognize this. Would that be something that you would agree with, or would you have other points to add?