Finance committee  Thank you. I think the cancellation of the grant has certainly had an impact on activity, particularly in the housing retrofit sector. It did provide the seed funding to homeowners to do the audit on what needed to be done, and then additional funds to actually see through on the audit.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Canada Green Building Council is an industry-driven organization that has been in existence for 12 years. We focus very much on market-driven solutions. One reason that green buildings—these are environmentally responsible, high-performance buildings—have been successful is that for the owners and the developers there is typically a very good return on investment.

Finance committee  They are imported from China. They are imported from Europe. The question is why more of these products and services and technologies are not homegrown. As I said, Canada is a world leader, but there is very little research at this point to support this relatively new sector. The innovation that's happening is really done by engineers and builders and designers who innovate as they apply these technologies and products and designs to new buildings.

Government Operations committee  They're coming.

Government Operations committee  Do not underestimate what I call the human element, people having to change their habits. I think that is probably one of the biggest challenges as well.

Government Operations committee  I'm a little bit familiar with the time frames. It's the Office of Energy Efficiency and Natural Resources Canada that started working on a Canadian version of the program. The program is supposed to be officially launched this June in Canada and initially they will accept, I think, K-to-12 schools and commercial buildings.

Government Operations committee  For the three of us, it is probably obvious that we didn't really think about it. But it's a huge opportunity to save taxpayers money over time. Don't forget, it goes over the life of the building as long as they operate, but it does require some investment. But over the life cycle of the building, the paybacks are manyfold from what you originally invested.

Government Operations committee  I believe that targeting high performance in existing buildings is a good use of taxpayers' money.

Government Operations committee  I'll quickly answer the first question. A number of studies have been done in schools and hospitals, at the workplace, but they're individual studies and they're not necessarily done under the green building auspices; they're just certain design elements like day lighting, natural ventilation, which is better for students or for patients, and so on.

Government Operations committee  I don't know about the returns because I'm not involved, but I do know that large commercial landlords do use pension funds to invest in buildings and that the internal rates of returns are in excess of 10%.

Government Operations committee  Doing a new, gold-certified LEED tower in Toronto in the downtown financial district costs about 2% more to build and the returns are over 10%. So the math is pretty straightforward, I think.

Government Operations committee  No. No, it's not correct. I can give you the numbers. What I was trying to say is that there only four buildings out of your 150.... The Government of Canada has 150 buildings on LEED. There are only four buildings.... They're all new builds, all new construction. There are only four buildings that target existing buildings' retrofit and maintenance out of the over 150.

Government Operations committee  I think it's just that right now we don't see the LEED for existing buildings being adopted at other levels of government either. I think it's just an evolution of the market. As I said before, the private sector is very strong in this area, but they have different objectives in terms of return on investment and tenant demand.

Government Operations committee  Actually, the Canada Green Building Council was originally started by architects and we work very closely with RAIC, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, which is still one of our main stakeholders. It was the architects, initially, who wanted to design buildings that are better, not just in terms of energy, but also electricity, water, well-being, lighting, all kinds of things.

Government Operations committee  Yes, they are, and for quite some time now.