Environment Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[Randal Froebelius]

Do you mean the production of the waste and what happens to that waste when you demolish? Is that what you're referring to?

Right now when you do any renovations, you do a hazardous material assessment of your building before you even engage a contractor. That audit of the asset becomes kind of the foundation for what you're going to do. I would say that our industry—and I'm sure some of it is driven by regulation—has adapted. I don't have any percentages or numbers for you, but certainly the industry is focused on what happens to that when we do a renovation versus what would happen if we tore down and started new. The argument is always for renovation, though, I have to say, but you might build on top.

[Benjamin Shinewald]

It's not because of LEED. We have a co-operative relationship with them. It's not competitive at all.

It's what Rob said a few minutes ago. There's already embedded energy in the existing structure. The trucks came. The mixture was mixed. All that work and energy happened when this building...and this building had asbestos in it at one point, back in the day, so to knock it down brings new embedded energy. To haul it away brings new embedded energy. To build a new one brings new embedded energy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Bossio, go ahead.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Hill, I want to take a different tack here as quickly as I can.

As you said, we have a new housing strategy , a $40 billion investment. My chief concern is that under the criteria for funding those affordable housing units are municipal services and public transit. I would say that from a building code standpoint and energy efficiency standpoint, in rural areas you get far greater efficiencies through a well and a septic system, and you get far greater efficiencies because you have lower costs for land and you can put up solar and do ground-source heat. There are also so many other aspects, but those aren't considered part of the criteria. Would you say that moving forward, we should be looking at those as part of the criteria for affordable housing funding?

[Duncan Hill]

Definitely. I don't know of anything in the national housing strategy that would preclude the use of on-site systems like those you refer to, such as ground-source energy, a well, a septic system, etc. I think we're okay on that.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

But requiring some of the key components of the criteria to be public transit and municipal services for the building automatically creates a disadvantage on the rural side. Should we try to balance that?

[Duncan Hill]

Yes, and there is prioritization going to be looked at for remote and rural communities to balance that. We do recognize that there's not a bus in every rural community so that we can put a bus stop beside the building. Yes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Finally, concerning energy efficiency versus energy production, we always talk about efficiency, but we don't talk about ensuring within the building code that we're not just looking at the efficiency of the building—this gets to your point earlier—but also at the capability for production of energy. Should we be building that into the code, the ability to quickly adapt buildings for production rather than just efficiency?

[Rob Bernhardt]

Understanding that, I know that is in discussion in the code committees. It's something they're evaluating, and it's a live point. It's a good point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I am most grateful. We've had a really good round, with lots of good questions.

There are things that were asked that I believe you're going to be providing us. You may reflect on the questions and have more to say than I gave you time to be able to say. We would love to have that as quickly as possible. It is a fairly short study, so we'd like to get anything extra in quickly. Our focus is on recommendations we can bring forward at the federal level.

There is a lot of work already going on. We could have just said that we're not going to do the study, that it's all being dealt with, but I think we wanted to get this work into the public in a way that only committees can, and we wanted to be able to see how we can help.

If there is something that we can help with—it's always good to have more support for things—let us know, and we will then consider that for our recommendations in our report. That's where we're looking. How can we help this very great process that's under way across the world and in Canada?

Thank you.

I'm going to suspend. We'll take a couple of minutes to clear the room and go in camera.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]