Thank you very much for the introduction and the opportunity to meet with the committee. I promise I won't talk until the bells go.
I'm here to speak to the proposed changes to the Energy Efficiency Act, as described in the Clean Air Act. The Energy Efficiency Act was brought into force in 1995.
Canada regulates more products than any other country in the world: we regulate more products than the EU; we regulate more products than the APEC countries; we regulate more products than our closest competitor, the United States, who regulates 30 products while we regulate 45. As well, our regulations are among the most stringent in the world. The European Union is bringing in a refrigerator standard that we have had in place for five years; 6% of EU motors can meet the motor standard that we put in place in 1997.
We can see that we're making progress in regulating energy efficient equipment in Canada. The big household appliances use less energy per unit than they did in 1990, and even though there's more of them, they use less overall energy, not just unit energy.
However, we have a lot of work left to do. With the proliferation of electronic goods—the plug-in goods, the DVDs and television sets and computers, and the things that proliferate in our homes and in our offices—the energy use of these products has overtaken the gains we have made in energy efficiency in home appliances and lighting and other areas. So the proposed changes to the Energy Efficiency Act by the Clean Air Act will have us regulating 20 new products and strengthening the energy efficiency regulations for 10 existing products.
I'm going to take you through five proposed changes to the Energy Efficiency Act itself, as proposed in the Clean Air Act, starting on slide 22. These will strengthen and broaden our ability to regulate energy-using products.
The first change that we propose to the Energy Efficiency Act is that we be given the authority to regulate by class of product. Instead of regulating every product one by one, we're seeking the authority to be able to identify classes or families of products based on their common characteristics. The best example I can give you is the one I just mentioned, that of all this plug-in equipment. If we can regulate consumer electronics according to their standby power losses, we will be part of an important international program, i.e., IEA-led and G-8 program, to monitor energy use when our pieces of equipment are off—which can actually use as much as 25 watts when not on. And if we have 25 of these pieces of equipment on average in Canadian households, think of all the energy waste that's going on.
So we would like to regulate these very efficiently and flexibly by class of product. That way we can keep up with the fact that the technologies are changing very quickly.
The second change that we're proposing—on slide 23—to the Energy Efficiency Act is to give us the authority to regulate products that affect or control energy use but aren't necessarily energy-using themselves. The examples I'll give you are electronic thermostats instead of mechanical thermostats. They have the potential to reduce energy use in a home by 5% to 14%, if it's an electrically heated home. Another example is a little gizmo in commercial dishwashers that's a very simple piece of equipment but that has an enormous impact on how much hot water is used, and therefore how much energy is used in commercial dishwashers. Right now we can't get at them because they're not energy-using products, but they do affect energy use. So that's the second change we would like to bring forward to the Energy Efficiency Act.
The third change—also on slide 23—is to broaden the labelling provisions under the Energy Efficiency Act. Currently we can speak to the form and manner of labelling, but we would like to be able to tell consumers more about the energy consumption and to have the regulatory authority to do that.
Turning to slide 24, the proposed amendment to the Energy Efficiency Act would require that all shipments of products in Canada meet the federal energy efficiency regulations. Currently we can regulate goods that are imported and sold, and we can regulate goods that are manufactured in one province and shipped to another, but we don't have access to regulate products that are imported and then shipped to another province. That's a bit of a gap, and we'd like to correct that gap.
The fifth proposed amendment to the Energy Efficiency Act has to do with information that we need to get from shippers in order to ensure that people are complying with the energy efficiency regulations. The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations opined that we did not have the proper legislative authority to get all the data we need to properly monitor Canada's energy efficiency regulations. So we would set that right with this proposed amendment to the Energy Efficiency Act.
In summary—on slide 26—these are important regulatory proposals. They would put Canada clearly in the leadership in the world with regard to regulating energy efficiency in these types of products. We would be regulating over 80% of the energy used in the home and about 80% of the energy used in a commercial setting.
I'll be happy to answer any questions after you return.
Thank you.