Evidence of meeting #93 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was codes.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Frank DesRosiers  Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources
Sarah Stinson  Director, Buildings and Industry Division, Office of Energy Efficiency, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources
Richard Tremblay  Director General, Construction, National Research Council of Canada
Philip Rizcallah  Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada
Vincent Ngan  Director General, Horizontal Policy Engagement & Coordination, Department of the Environment

11:40 a.m.

Philip Rizcallah Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada

In the case of model codes, the national system creates a national building code, and provinces then will adopt that national building code, either as the national building code per se or as a provincial code. B.C. has a B.C. building code. Ontario has an Ontario building code. Quebec has a Quebec building code. Those are essentially the national code with some deviations.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Up or down.

11:40 a.m.

Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada

Philip Rizcallah

Up or down, but generally if B.C. is going to do something, they may go up. Generally the provinces will go up slightly. The national code is adopted with a lot of consultation with the provinces. What we aim to do when we're developing the national codes is to make sure that the provinces are on board. One of the recommendations that came back from the provinces was,“Look, some provinces are well ahead of us on the energy front. Some of them are right on par with the national code, and we're actually behind in some cases.”

In order to alleviate those provinces so that we're not just coming at them and saying, “In 2022, you're going to have a net-zero ready building, so you have to go from this point to that point”, the agreement amongst the provinces and through the consultation with the commission was that we would develop tiers—tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4. Each one of those tiers would be a progressive increase. The province would come in and say, “Okay we're ready to jump to tier 2 right now, and then in about three or four years we can jump to tier 3, tier 4”, with the objective of reaching a 2030 mandate of net-zero. In working with them, we realize that this is probably going to be the best approach. We may not have consistency upfront, but the end goal will be the same. Everybody will jump the same way. Some provinces currently are ahead of the national system. Some provinces are using the national system, and then there are some provinces that haven't yet adopted it at the national level. It varies across the country, but we're hoping with this new approach we are going to have more consistency as we go forward.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Do I still have more time?

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Very little, but enough for one quick question.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

When you say that some people are having challenges and are below the national level, would it be the northern regions that would have some more challenges?

11:40 a.m.

Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada

Philip Rizcallah

I wouldn't necessarily say that it's always the northern regions. Some of them are provinces. It could be for a number of reasons. Maybe the priorities within that province are different. Maybe they're focusing on greenhouse gas reduction versus energy reduction, or maybe they're focusing on fire safety. It depends on what the priority of that government is. In most cases, all of them want to move towards some sort of energy reduction, but not necessarily at the same level that we're working on.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Thanks.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Thanks very much.

Mr. Fast.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Thank you so much to all of you for attending today and sharing some of your expertise with us.

As you move towards a net-zero energy ready model code for both new and existing construction, if it's new construction and it's adopted by the province or territory, it then becomes mandatory to comply with it. It's a different story for existing construction, where I'm assuming that the provinces would not be expected to enforce it in the way they would with new construction. There may be some incentives that play a role in getting Canadians to upgrade their homes. Am I correct in making those assumptions?

11:40 a.m.

Director General, Construction, National Research Council of Canada

Richard Tremblay

On the incentive aspect, I think am not best suited to answer that, but in regards to the legislative aspect, I would point out that in the life of a house there are many mini-steps. You need to change the windows. Sometimes you want to enlarge your house and you have to do a major retrofit. A province could, if they wished, adopt it, and with a retrofitted house, when they issue a permit, they could ask one day that the code be respected.

Phil, do you want to add on this?

11:45 a.m.

Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada

Philip Rizcallah

It's actually a very valid point. At this point the national building code, the national energy codes, apply to new buildings. What the National Research Council is doing is creating what we consider to be a technical guide. It's a technical guide because there's currently no code for existing buildings. That technical guide will be written in code language so that the provinces can say, “Okay, we want to take this technical guide and either enforce it immediately, phase it in, or through any major retrofit or renovation, we will force the homeowner or the building owner to meet these certain requirements.” They could meet some of those requirements through grants, or they could say, “You're coming in for a retrofit of your house and you're renovating 40% of your home. We're going to trigger a mechanism that you have to upgrade your insulation, your windows, your doors.” It will be up to each province to decide how they're going to incorporate that.

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

As you move forward with making buildings more energy efficient, the issue of affordability comes up. I come from a region of the country where housing affordability is a huge issue. Housing availability is a crisis in the Vancouver area, where young families have difficulty getting into any kind of housing other than rental housing. The costs of implementing a new net-zero energy ready model code will be significant. It will add to the cost of new construction. It will also add to the cost of renovating a home and upgrading existing construction. Have any of you done an analysis of the actual cost impact that a new code will have on Canada's housing owners and on the ones wanting to get into the market?

11:45 a.m.

Director, Building Regulations, National Research Council of Canada

Philip Rizcallah

As Mr. Tremblay indicated in his presentation, when the National Research Council and the commission's committees develop technical changes, they are required to carry out a cost-benefit analysis. That doesn't mean that because something has a cost, it doesn't go into the code. What they look at is whether there is a payback on the system.

Let's assume there is a requirement in the code now that says you have to have triple-pane windows. They look at the cost of a triple pane versus what's currently required in the code, and they ask, what is the payback by putting triple pane? If the payback is 100 years, then it's probably not a good solution. If the payback is two or three years, or five years, then that's a good solution and it's worked in. Sure, there is an upfront cost to the homeowner, but after a few years that's going to pay back. Generally that's how they look at the changes when they're incorporating them into the codes.

NRC has looked at various trends—what happened when they introduced solar panels, for example, into the mainstream. Ten years ago you would have looked at solar panels as a method of providing energy to your home, and it may have cost $70,000 for a typical home. You look at it today, 10 years later, and the same solar panels, with better efficiency and better technology, are down to about $10,000 or $12,000.

The research council expects that the pricing will start going down as new technologies start coming into the marketplace. Up front there could be a cost. I wouldn't say there is going to be a significant cost, but there may be a cost. It depends on the technology and how you design the house. There is a possibility of building a house with no additional cost, depending on how you design the house up front, but later on we expect that the technology will allow us to bring in much more affordable systems.

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Yes, a big concern, of course, for a new home buyer is the upfront cost, especially now that the banks are applying a stress test for mortgage availability.

I'm wondering whether there is any movement afoot to introduce or reintroduce some kind of an incentive program, like the ecoENERGY program that was introduced a few years ago.

11:45 a.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

That's a political question, right?

11:45 a.m.

Vincent Ngan Director General, Horizontal Policy Engagement & Coordination, Department of the Environment

In June 2017 we announced a leadership fund for the low-carbon economy, and then in December we announced, with six provinces, our plan to partner them in supporting the energy retrofit program. They include Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and New Brunswick. We are providing support for their retrofit energy efficiency programs, to make some of these retrofit changes more affordable, and to create jobs that are supporting innovation and clean growth.

There are incentives provided through the low-carbon economy fund to our provincial and territorial partners.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Thank you.

Ms. Duncan.

February 6th, 2018 / 11:50 a.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Thank you.

Great question. I would have asked that, too, but I would certainly encourage the federal government to look into more innovative ways of helping people. If homeowners are going to be bound by 2030 to retrofit existing houses, we need a reality check here, because even people with a good income can't afford to do that. I'm thinking here of things like a tax write-off if you do an energy retrofit.

I had the privilege when I was the NDP critic for public works to participate in the study, “'Powering' the Future of Federal Buildings: Energy Efficiency as a Goal”, in 2012-13.

There are two responsibilities of the federal government. One is the national building code, but the federal government is also responsible for its own building stock, and I've heard nothing about that. I am wondering if you are aware of it, or if anybody is paying attention to this report, which made very cogent, useful recommendations. The federal government has a huge potential because they own so many buildings, if you look at things like National Defence and so forth.

What action has been taken? You don't need to give me all the details. If there is any kind of report that's been done to action that report, I would appreciate it if the committee could receive it.

There were recommendations such as that the federal government be required to collect, monitor, and report on energy use in each of its facilities. There was also a recommendation that Canada consider adopting what the U.S. Department of Energy did, which actually imposed directives to every federal department and facility on percentage of reduced energy use by a set date and percentage of reduced water use by a set date.

I am wondering if somebody could speak briefly to that. What are you doing about your own building stock?

11:50 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources

Frank DesRosiers

I'm happy to.

We call it “greening government operations”, so you're quite right. It is one of those important areas where both the federal and provincial governments ought to show some leadership. It's actually part of our pan-Canadian framework and overall strategy to show that the federal government and provinces can not only adopt it, but also show the way. It is for this reason that the Government of Canada set a higher target for our own operation of 40% by the year 2030, above the 30% for the rest of the economy.

It has been assigned to the Treasury Board Secretariat, a central agency, as you know, that has powers and influence across the entire federal government. It has expressed in very clear terms to each and every deputy head the expectation that they ought to meet that objective in their respective operations, cutting across those large numbers of buildings as well as the fleet that is present around the country.

I would not render justice if I did this in a short 90 seconds, or whatever time I am allotted to give you a summary.

11:50 a.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Do you have something you could share with us on what you're doing and how well you've done?

11:50 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources

Frank DesRosiers

I sure can, yes, but maybe on high-level terms. The TBS is leading the efforts each department has to execute to meet those specific objectives that have been laid out. We also, to your point about learning from others, took a page from the U.S. DOE's experience, the U.S. Department of Energy—

11:50 a.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Thank you.

11:50 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources

Frank DesRosiers

—and some of the recommendations of the department—

11:50 a.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

The previous administration refused to do that.