Finance committee  Certainly I think they had a lot of money in reserves, and I think that's put away for a rainy day. I don't think that was the intent of their funds. We're very satisfied with the CMHC's commitment to making housing affordable to the vast majority of Canadians, and right now I do

Finance committee  The issue is obviously much deeper than that, but generally that's one of the reasons why their costs are lower than the legitimate taxpaying contractor: they don't remit GST, whether that's a legitimate under $30,000 or whether they just make $100,000 and still don't remit.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting us to be here today. I am Victor Fiume, president of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, and I have with me here today Mr. Vince Laberge, first vice-president. Both Vince and I are new home builders and renovators. My company operates

Natural Resources committee  There is a program called HOT2000, which does those calculations when you input them. The difficulty is that every house is different.

Natural Resources committee  So you would have to model each home independently. I can tell you that on an Energy Star home, which costs about $4,000 or $5,000 more than the average house, the savings are about 30% compared with a conventional home built under the building code. So it's in the area of probab

Natural Resources committee  Off the top, without getting into huge discussions, certainly it would be to look at all areas of products, from shower heads all the way up. I think part of the program is big dollars and big investments by the homeowners. I think we need to cast our net much wider. We also nee

Natural Resources committee  In regard to your first question, certainly there is additional cost for the energy efficiency program Energy Star and some of the others that are out there. One of the things that leads to the success of this program is that we can clearly demonstrate a healthier home, a more co

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. I travel across the country, and it's absolutely the case from coast to coast that these are builder-led voluntary initiatives. The public has caught on, indeed, in Ontario and others. Saskatchewan has about a 25% uptake. So it has been very, very successful across th

Natural Resources committee  No, it was a surprise to us.

Natural Resources committee  We are home builders and we are always an optimistic bunch.

Natural Resources committee  Having said that, we are concerned. We don't want to lose this momentum. It's critical from a public perception point of view. It's also critical from an employment point of view in that we have now a whole bunch of new green jobs. We have people who specialize in this area, but

Natural Resources committee  In the case of many of the programs, there are no grants or rebates available for new homes. There is very little available. Basically, the programs across Canada are driven voluntarily by builders in this industry who have a commitment to energy efficiency and to building better

Natural Resources committee  They could not rely on the program. They could rely on the energy savings they will get in retrofitting their home.

Natural Resources committee  As I see it, yes, that's correct: there are no more applications being taken. For us, we see this hopefully as a temporary measure.

Natural Resources committee  Initiatives such as geothermal are very important, but they're also very costly. We could do so much more in a house with a lot fewer dollars. Just replacing your shower head with a low-flow shower head cuts your gas or electricity consumption, and it also requires municipalities