Environment Committee on Feb. 6th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You still have time.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

No, that's fine. I'll turn it over to Mr. Fast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You still have a minute.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Since we're talking about wood, wood represents stored carbon and there are efforts being made to expand the use of wood in residential and other types of construction. It would be interesting to hear whether that is playing into your considerations at all, especially when you look at the building at UBC, the 18-storey wood-frame building. It still has a fair bit of concrete in it, but it's an amazing piece of construction. It is cutting edge. I would be interested to hear your views on the role that wood will play in future construction.

[Richard Tremblay]

As you know, with the 2015 codes, we are allowed to go up to six storeys high with wood construction right now. There is now word about going up to 12 storeys. We will follow the same code process with the stakeholders around the table. We do this necessary technical work to be sure it's safe—fire-wise and structurally speaking. We would look at the economics of that.

It's in the process right now for the 2020 code.

[Philip Rizcallah]

Yes.

[Frank DesRosiers]

Coming from the ministry looking after forestry, the Canadian Forest Service and NRCan, as you know, it's really an opportunity that we share because we want to diversify and expand our markets. I would add that it's not just an opportunity in B.C. or in Canada, but also abroad.

Minister Carr visited China, along with many of our partner countries there, working with them to look at their own building codes. Over the years, those have become very significant markets for lumber exports for Canada and we would like to grow them even more. They have been quite receptive to work with us and again, to develop their own building codes to make sure we're able to ship even more quantities of this and demonstrate in Canada that this can be done. They are not only doable, but they are beautiful.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Go ahead, Mr. Sidhu.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for coming out and discussing a very important issue going forward.

I heard about energy savings going forward and new buildings. Has anybody done any comparison of the waste that's going to be generated if you tear a building down. It's going to be chaos with the landfills, and who knows for how many years to come? Yes, we're going to be saving energy over the next 25 years, but how do you compare? I'm not talking about the value; I'm talking about the environmental chaos that it's going to create.

Yes, we're going to keep the heritage buildings in mind. We're not going to take those down. I'm talking about 90% to 95% of buildings, if you're suggesting that they should come down.

Where do we go with that?

[Sarah Stinson]

I'm not aware of any comparisons or cost-benefit analyses done of keeping an existing building versus tearing it down to build a more highly efficient building. I certainly don't want to speculate on what the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes might look at, but when they do look at the energy codes for new buildings and existing buildings, perhaps that's some kind of consideration that would be looked at, in that context.

[Richard Tremblay]

In regard to the waste aspect of that, we don't have data or a study on that. Of course, when we do a new code provision, again, we look at all of the economic impacts of retrofitting it. How much it is going to cost? What's the payback? What's the cost of a new building and the impact? In regard to the waste, we don't have data on that.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

We should look into that before we come up with new codes and knock everything down.

The second question is this. In talking about the codes, we can present them to new builders as a way of saving money. I remember in my time—I built a home in 2000—geothermal was just coming into the picture. The first quote to do my home was $39,000 brand new. There weren't many companies doing it. Halfway through, they came back with a $60,000 quote. I knew where it was going. I knew if I retained them to do geothermal brand new, it was going to be $100,000. I didn't do it because I did the cost analysis and I was only going to get my $100,000 back in 25 to 30 years.

Now we have new codes for new buildings—some 25% of the building stock, and 75% of the existing homes in our country. However, with the aging population in our country, are those people able to renovate those homes? When it comes down to implementing those codes, it's the municipality. It's not even the province or territory. They can funnel it down to municipalities. If you go to get a permit for an extension, a lot of people don't even get permits for renovations and nobody knows what they're doing. For a roof, you don't need a permit.

How do we go forward? Do we have funding in place? Do we have subsidies? Do we have grants? How do you encourage people to renovate those homes up to the new codes?

[Frank DesRosiers]

I could attempt to talk about this first dimension. We touched on the other one a little bit before, but maybe colleagues will have something to add.

You mentioned the cost of a geothermal unit. This is actually a great example of the kind of work that is currently happening with the research facilities and the companies. Our goal is to shave the cost by half. That's our ambition that we set ourselves, working with the manufacturers of those various technologies out there.

We're currently looking, for instance, at using CO2—although it sounds counterintuitive—as a mode to kind of carry the heat or lack of heat or cold in the pipes, and being able to look at different drain technologies and heat pump systems to make sure that the costs go way down. That's what we're working for, so that in the future maybe you, your kids, or your neighbours, when they ask for a bid, will get a very different answer. Then they will be able to act on it and will be able to exploit the potential of geothermal, which is, I would argue, underexploited in Canada. We don't have too many of those geothermal facilities in Canada, and that's something that we see as a bit of a gap in our game.

Do colleagues want to add anything on the second dimension? We've already touched on it before, on adoption.

[Sarah Stinson]

I'd only add that one of the activities and initiatives that NRCan is pursuing is looking out for equipment in particular and developing market transformation strategies. When we speak of the governance, there's the energy and mines ministers' conference, which is a federal-provincial-territorial body that works to help implement a lot of the measures within the pan-Canadian framework. It released a market transformation strategy for equipment in August 2016. Consultations with industry, provinces, and territories took place in the fall, and are ongoing this week, as part of our efforts to ensure that those costs come down and the affordability for this equipment within our buildings decreases over time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm going to give another round. I'm going to give three minutes to Linda...some time...three and three, and then we'll be out of time.

Go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

This is really good. Just as a reminder, if you have anything on what's happened with the Office of Greening Government Operations report, your greening of the infrastructure, I'd really appreciate if we could receive that.

[Frank DesRosiers]

Will do, yes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

One of the issues we haven't talked about is the Just Transition and the training. It's one measure in the energy strategy that the current government has not addressed.

One of the big challenges in moving forward, especially with the retrofit of existing housing, existing commercial buildings, including historic facilities is the training. I initiated something in our heritage area in my city, and it's a struggle to try to do it.

Before the ecoENERGY retrofit was killed by the Harper government—they put it in and then took it away—there was a whole group of young people lined up in Edmonton to do energy audits and then to retrofit the poorest community in my riding. It was cancelled. One of the questions people ask, too—there are seniors and lower-income people—is whom to ask to do this kind of work and whom they can rely on.

What is NRCan doing to invest in the training for the very people who are going to be doing this retrofitting, or installing clean technology, or doing energy audits?

[Sarah Stinson]

NRCan has a number of programs to support that kind of capacity building. They're delivered on the energy efficiency side with respect to deployment and programs, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from provinces and territories on the local energy efficiency partnerships program, which in essence is accelerating home builder innovation. It builds capacity within that particular construction sector to be able to build to those higher standards and develop a capacity more broadly so that increasingly the bar is raised.

We also have a number of other programs that help increase that awareness and that capacity. Mr. DesRosiers mentioned, for example, the Energy Star Portfolio Manager and Energy Star tools to help—

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay, but that's different from building.

[Sarah Stinson]

Sure, absolutely, but they do apply to commercial buildings.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Related to that on the commercial buildings, one of the things that I find so frustrating is that in my city we have a huge area of light industrial and then commercial. It's all built in the south end of the city and there's only one building that has gone net zero that everybody goes to visit. We've talked a lot about housing but we haven't talked about what measures. I find it astounding that in this day and age, anybody would be allowed to build a big commercial or a light industrial facility without it being energy efficient. I mean, it just makes common sense. It reduces their costs. Are there going to be things in the building code that specifically relate to those kinds of facilities?

My final question for you is—and you may want to speak to this—in in regard to a wonderful construction company in my city, called Landmark. They were just awarded an Order of Canada because of their innovations, but they have backed off from a lot of their innovations because of the frustration with trying to get approvals. So those kind of fit together.

I'm a little bit troubled that everybody's always saying, “Oh, if only we had the technology.” The government wants to invest in pilots. I participated in the Generation Energy forum the day before, and almost all of us said, “Please, don't put all your money into more demos. Put it into deployment of the existing technology.” I wonder if you could speak to those together.

[Sarah Stinson]

Sure. And maybe the National Research Council can speak to that as well. With respect to incorporating requirements within the commercial code, there are two distinct codes for buildings. One is the national energy code for buildings, which applies to commercial and institutional buildings. The other one is the national building code, which is for the residential sector. So all of those considerations whether they're sector-specific or they are looked at in the context of those codes—

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It's clearly not driving change, because I'm seeing these ridiculous buildings being built that could be energy efficient or use solar. So what do we do between now and 2030 to try to make that happen?