Natural Resources committee  There's no doubt that they do decrease consumption. It's sometimes in the order of 30% or 35%. People don't like them because they add an element of uncertainty to the bill. In many cases, people don't realize that in an average apartment building when you go to submetering, or some landlords have the metres for electricity installed so they can measure what electricity is going to what unit, you find that about 15% of the users use a great deal; about 15% are on average; and 70% are using less than the average, so they would save.

Natural Resources committee  I'm sorry. I confess to having thought that the question wasn't overly applicable to me.

Natural Resources committee  Exactly.

Natural Resources committee  What happens is that in the classes that provide for a 50% CCA rate, there's a half-year rule, so in the first year you get 25%, and then it's a declining balance. You get 37.5% in the second year, about 25% in the third, and about 10% in the fourth year. People think of 50% and think that means two years, but it's not two years because of the half-year rule.

Natural Resources committee  I also had the same surprised reaction when my researcher gave me this information. Her reference was not to Okotoks but to another area in a western province for which her information—I think it came from government sources—was that these people were not supposed to be doing this but were going ahead anyway, because they want this energy submetering to happen.

Natural Resources committee  Electricity is a provincial matter, and the province has a regulation with respect to refrigerators, the age at which it was installed, in order to get to the refrigerators that are more sound from an energy point of view. That has been addressed on the refrigeration side. On the heat side, buildings are what they are.

Natural Resources committee  I think that of the programs that did run, the last iteration was a good program. One or two programs before that had not been as effective. They had certain limitations; they came at it in a particular way. I think the most recent one was the third version, and it was properly set up so that it minimized risk and assisted people in making energy improvements.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, to some degree it has within the sector. The references I've made to the U.S. and the U.K. in the written paper were specifically with respect to tax programs that gave a preferential approved tax treatment to energy-efficiency renovations. They are more akin to the one we were pitching for in the written presentation than the subsidy program you're referring to.

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chair, thank you very much for inviting us to this committee, and thank you to all the committee members. You have our written submission, but I will speak more broadly than that submission, leaving that submission as one example of a broader theme. The Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations, CFAA, represents the owners and managers of close to one million rental homes across Canada, through 14 provincial and municipal associations and also direct landlord memberships.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. Now, our tenants are not all teenagers—some of them are 18, 19, and 20 years old—but by the same token, any of us, if we are faced with a free good, will tend to waste it. We want to use submetering. We want to use it for electricity. We also want to use it for heat. But under the Weights and Measures Act, it is illegal for us to submeter for heat.

Finance committee  Thank you, Monsieur Carrier. The position of our federation is that there should be much more attention paid to direct subsidies to tenants rather than construction, because the situation we have is that low-income people, in the vast bulk of cases now, are housed. They are housed even in adequate housing and suitable housing.

Finance committee  Again, is it the point for the system to provide subsidies based on the values, so that if you have an expensive home you get a lot of subsidy? Normally, the answer would be no. Assuming that away, I would say that the point you're making has some validity, but the discrepancy is not nearly as strong as the discrepancy in these numbers.

Finance committee  Many of those programs are also available to homeowners, and we have taken into account some of those. What the study does not address—I'll be quite frank with you, and we have it in written material—is the money that goes to social housing. In our view, social housing is essentially an income support mechanism: it's targeted at low-income people.

Finance committee  Well, understand that we're not saying that these things should be taxed. Frankly, you'd have a revolution on your hands. What we're saying is that there should be recognition that this is a benefit that is received, and it's a valuable benefit that equates to real money. So when you're designing the system, you should be looking at how you can make the system more fair to renters.

Finance committee  That's correct. So there was no incentive for the landlord to do that. You might say we're not trying to give landlords more profit, but the issue is if that you reduce the cost to landlords of doing repairs, they're more likely to do them. That will improve the rental standards.