Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide you with more details about our program, ecoENERGY retrofit homes. It's a welcome opportunity to discuss this program, which, as I think you heard from the first hour, is one that we feel has been very successful.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I will just add a little bit to support that question. From Natural Resources Canada's perspective, we also have the ecoENERGY for biofuels program, which supports domestic production of biofuels, which may, in fact, serve producers who come from the forestry or farming sectors.

Natural Resources committee  I'll take that question if that's all right, Mr. Chair. The ecoENERGY retrofit homes program has provided financial incentives to over 7,000 homeowners to support their implementation of a geothermal heat pump system in their homes, so that program has been supporting that technology at the residential sector level.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I would say it's been very successful. It's reached almost 300,000 homeowners to date and paid out over $340 million in grants. That includes 7,000 homeowners who have received quite substantial grants for heat pumps.

Natural Resources committee  The decisions were made by ministers in 2006 on how to allocate this funding suite called ecoENERGY efficiency. The decisions made at the time were to put incentives into existing homes to improve their efficiency. The decision was not made by ministers to provide incentives for new homes, for new energy efficient homes.

Natural Resources committee  Effectiveness.

Natural Resources committee  The evaluations on the energy efficiency programs are expected in a couple of months. In the meantime, there are public records of our emission reductions in the annual report to Parliament. The energy efficiency programs report on their progress every year in that public fashion.

Natural Resources committee  Certainly. Thank you for the question and the observation. Because we review our progress on the energy efficiency programs at mid-year and at the end of the year, every cycle, and we are three years into this four-year set of programs, we have made many observations about improving the effectiveness of our programs.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, certainly, let me repeat, we have made many improvements to the effectiveness of our programs. For example, on the small and medium-sized organizations incentive program, in response to an audit, we are reviewing how we audit the recipients to ensure that the program funds were spent appropriately.

Natural Resources committee  We do assess the impacts of each program. Obviously, you're looking at a roll-up across all of the programs, which we will have more definitively when we have our evaluations. So we have our own internal progress accounting on each of the programs and I'm reluctant to share that until we have the third-party independent evaluations that give us that—

Natural Resources committee  Certainly the criteria for measuring the effectiveness of any one program are very much linked to that particular program. We're sitting before you today representing a real range of different program types. In an incentive program, we would look at the effectiveness not just of the dollars per tonne; it's also how many resources in the Government of Canada are required to process the applications but provide due diligence for the Canadian taxpayer that the investment has actually taken place.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Indeed, before we can get program approval on an area of activities that has already existed in the past, we have to have a third-party independent evaluation. As I mentioned earlier, there are five third-party independent evaluations under way right now in the energy efficiencies suite of programs, for the equipment, industry, buildings, housing, and transportation programs.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's a very interesting question. The leverage for each program is quite unique to that program. It depends on how much investment the Government of Canada is making vis-à-vis how much investment the energy consumer needs to make. In the case of the small and medium organizations incentive, a small building or a small factory would get access to up to $50,000 in incentives for an investment they make, and the leverage is as you have indicated.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I'll just build on my colleague's comments to respond to your question on, comparatively, biofuels or carbon capture and storage. With respect to biofuels, the government support for biofuels is in a fairly similar position as its support for wind. We have 21 agreements with companies to support biofuels production and we have applications from a number more that we will not be able to satisfy.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, we do indeed track the cost per tonne, and a number of different methodologies are used to assess cost per tonne. You can take the cost of the program and simply divide it by the emission reductions, the tonnes. You can take the cost of the program to the government and to the user and develop it that way.