Environment Committee on Feb. 13th, 2018

[Michael McSweeney]

Yes. We make two kinds of cement: portland-limestone cement and general use cement. The general use cement goes through the kiln at about 1,500°C for two or three minutes. When you make portland-limestone cement, you add limestone at the end of the process, so you're not using as much energy—petcoke, coal, natural gas. You reduce the energy. You have a net savings of 10% GHGs with that new cement.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Interesting.

[Michael McSweeney]

The same equivalency of product.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Same product equivalency....

[Michael McSweeney]

Same product and no price differentiation. It's the same price.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Why is it not our default cement, then, if it is this good for our environment at reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

[Michael McSweeney]

Tender writers, specifiers, and procurement individuals are very slow to change. It's “we did this last year; we did this 10 years ago”.

We believe in the CO2 road map that I referred to, and we will be sure to get that to you.

Government will have to have a role in regulations and mandates if we are going to get to our 2030 and 2050 targets. We cannot let municipal tender writers or provincial tender writers or federal procurement people set the details. There needs to be vision and direction from the top down, from the Minister of Public Procurement, the Minister of the Environment, and the Minister of Infrastructure, that every dollar we spend needs to be looked at through the lens of climate change. Only when you do that will you see reductions in greenhouse gases, and generally at no cost.

First, employ life cycle, choose building materials that last the longest, then look at every dollar you spend through the climate lens. Finally, to Darren Fisher's comments, choose the best available technologies, like CarbonCure, and our new cement, Contempra. Sometimes it needs to be mandated. We're asking that governments mandate that new product because you will see a 10% reduction immediately, at no cost to Canadians.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

That sounds like a no-brainer.

Quickly, you mentioned a private member's bill in your presentation, about prioritizing wood products over other construction products. It was passed to go into committee—

[Michael McSweeney]

Second reading.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

—at second reading.

Were you consulted on this at all?

[Michael McSweeney]

No, and that's typically what happens with the wood industry. They take tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars and then they lobby all of you and get what they want.

Canada is founded on fur, fish, and lumber. Whenever we talk about fish on the east coast or lumber across the country, or if we're talking about fur in Newfoundland, the politicians say, “Oh my God, we've got to answer this.”

Our belief is, choose the best building material for the job that gives you the best life cycle, that gives you the lowest carbon footprint.

Did you know that with a tree that is harvested, they go into the forest, strip all the branches, leaves, and bark, and leave it there to burn in slash piles or to rot. That creates greenhouse gases right away. Then they take the log to the timber mill and they square it off, and all that material is then turned into pellets to power the timber mill. By the time you get to this piece of furniture, there is only 12% of the original carbon sequestered there, and 88% of the carbon has been left on the forest floor or used to power the mill.

These are the facts and they are starting to come out now, as we force the wood industry to tell a truthful story, from cradle to cradle.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you.

[Michael Giroux]

Does the wood industry have a chance to reply on that, or are we letting that stand as fact?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That's up to Mr. Webber to let you speak.

Go ahead.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Please, Mr. Giroux, if you have anything else to say....

[Michael Giroux]

It's a bit disturbing.

I mean, we could say a lot about the cement industry as well. With portland cement, where limestone has been around for 20 years, they've had it for the last 10 years and it's not been adopted. Even within their membership, many silos need to be.... There are huge capital costs. At the end of the day, they're trying to get legislation in place to force their members to adopt the product as well.

In terms of the forestry products and Richard Cannings' private member's bill, that is one of the 450 communities that produce lumber, and he is there representing his riding and his interests. It is not the overall wood industry that is putting that forward. If they were, we would be pushing la charte du bois from Quebec.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Those were good responses on both sides. You're both great advocates for your industries, and we appreciate it.

Mr. Aldag.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

We've heard that 75% of the buildings will be in place when we get to the 2030 targets, 2050 targets, so I was pleased to hear the mention in a number of your comments, particularly from Mr. Mueller, on the idea of recommissioning and deep retrofits. I found it interesting listening to Landmark and what they're doing in the new construction world.

It's this whole dilemma I have about meeting our targets with what we know and what we have right now for codes and technologies. For the retrofits that are needed within that 75% of the existing building stock, will that carry us to where we need to go, or is there more work that needs to be done on the retrofit piece so we're not having to landfill existing buildings and bring in new construction to get us there?

I don't know if anybody has any comments that you want to offer about the existing standards to move us forward for retrofits and the idea of working within the 75% existing stock in order to meet targets. How do we get there? Is it a matter of doing it, or what else is needed to get us there?

[Thomas Mueller]

It's a really good question. I'll keep it really short. It's a bit complex. We modelled it, and actually by targeting about 60,000 buildings over the next 13 years leading up to 2030, we get a 30% reduction. It's not everything. It just needs to be more targeted and you need to go deeper. If you do a shallow retrofit, then people won't touch the building again for decades. It is has to go deeper. You have to do it and the technology exists. The technology exists right now to do it at a reasonable cost.

The owners who have done retrofits get the return on investment. There are just certain steps involved that need to be done, such as performance assurance. There needs to be investment. It cannot just be building by building, because the transaction costs are so high. That's why we've been talking to Infrastructure Canada about the Infrastructure Bank and that there needs to be bundled investment, and how we can reduce risk for investors and those types of things. These discussions are already going on.

It is critical that those 50,000 to 60,000 larger buildings of over 25,000 square feet are the ones up for renovation. There are plenty of models on how this can be done and there's the expertise, the contractors, the designers, and the equipment providers. This can be done right now. It's a matter of going over the three barriers. One is the initial cost, so access to capital is very important. Performance assurance is really important as well.

You have to commend the federal government. You're planning to introduce a renovations code by 2022, which will be another piece of the puzzle to move this sector forward.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. Does anybody else have any comments?

[Martin Luymes]

Can I add to that? I support the idea that a renovation code would be a big driver in this particular area. One of our views has been that certainly the emphasis should be on retrofit to a large extent because the opportunity is so enormous. A code would be very helpful, but we think incentives can help drive that business.

Another organization, of which I'm the chair, is the Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance. They did a study a couple of years ago that said Canadians want to do more and they want to start at home. They want to do more in their homes, but they don't know where to start.

We believe that providing good science-based information would be a very good start and that coming from the federal government could be very powerful. Related to that, there are programs for labelling of homes, or relabelling. The tools exist now. The federal government has the EnerGuide rating system for homes that hasn't really been deployed to its full potential across the country.

Our feeling is that homeowners, if they're given proper information, will make these investments in their homes either for a return on the investment or just because they believe it's the right thing to do. The evidence shows that Canadians think it's the right thing to do, so that would be a major driver for activity.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I'll come back to you in a second.

Mr. McSweeney, go ahead.

[Michael McSweeney]

You are the legislators, so legislate. Bring Jim Carr in, bring Navdeep Bains in, and ask, “Does Natural Resources and Navdeep Bains' department work with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change?” We have policy going up here, and then we have line departments. What we need is something coordinated.

The federal government, for example, has no problem telling me I'm going to have to pay a $50 carbon tax by 2022, and we're willing to do that. If you want to see retrofits, mandate retrofits. Just as you're mandating us in industry, mandate that anybody who is going to renovate a building must do this. There's a real role for mandates and regulations.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

[Michael Giroux]

I'm going to come at it from a slightly different angle.

Every Canadian wants to live in a community that is safe and green. Whether it's for buildings or for infrastructure, if you go out of your way to make visible the state of that infrastructure as it is today, whether it's crumbling or whether it's low or high energy, people will make the choice not to live there and will force the owners of the buildings to actually do something about those buildings.

I'm a great believer personally in the fact that we need to have community report cards or some way of making this more visible to people so that people feel obliged to do it.