Environment Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[The Chair (Mrs. Deborah Schulte (King—Vaughan, Lib.)), Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Welcome, everyone. We have three witnesses with us today. We're still working on the built environment. This will be our last day of witnesses. We're looking forward to the wisdom you're going to share with us.

I will introduce our guests. We have Alain Fournier, architect and founding partner of EVOQ Architecture. Thank you for being here.

We have, from Netzero Construction, Thomas Hewitt, president. Thank you for being here.

On the phone—and not by video conference, because it's very difficult to get that up in the north—is Gary Wong, director of infrastructure of Nunavut Housing Corporation.

I want to welcome all of you here today. We have a great panel again. I will open it up to the panel. I'll give you a couple of instructions: you have 10 minutes to share with us your witness statements. I'll put up a yellow card, which of course Mr. Wong can't see because he's on the phone, so I'll give him a notice of one minute when I hold up this yellow card. I don't like to keep interrupting, so I'll just hold that up and leave it up until I know that you've seen it—so give a nod. The red card means that you need to wrap it up because you've run out of time. Don't cut what you're saying; just finish naturally what you're trying to say.

All right. Thank you very much. We'll start with Mr. Wong because of possible technical difficulties. We want to make sure he is live right now and that he gets his chance to give us his information before something goes wrong.

Okay, Mr. Wong, if you could start, we'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

[Gary Wong, Director of Infrastructure, Nunavut Housing Corporation]

Thank you. My name is Gary Wong. I am the director of infrastructure at the Nunavut Housing Corporation up here in Iqaluit. I don't have a prepared presentation or specific agenda in mind. I was notified of this on very short notice, but I am quite willing to participate and answer questions to try to give you some insight into the challenges we experience up here.

My understanding is that this committee is looking specifically at the energy sector, in terms of the built environment and the whole desire to move the nation more toward a low-carbon economy. We are quite aware of energy usage, being in one of the coldest degree-day settings in the country.

I would like to start by saying that it is not new for northern builders and northern infrastructure to be dealing with energy issues. Whether they were attempting to do what was required in terms of cold compliance with standard industry practices of the day or were simply starting to build homes up in the north—which only goes back to the mid-1900s, really—because of the weather conditions and the logistics of getting materials up there, of course they tried to build the most energy efficient, warm structures they could, based on the understanding and availability at the time.

That said, my understanding up here is that once the R-2000 program was introduced by NRCan back in the 1980s, which was right after the big oil crunch, there was a lot of national interest in moving toward more energy efficient structures, coming out of the 1970s. Once again, this goes back to pre-Nunavut days, but the housing stock that we have to deal with up here now from those days tried to incorporate many of these R-2000 assemblies, including thermal bridging and increased insulation levels for warmth. That was not a code requirement. In southern jurisdictions, as a general rule, if you go back to the 1970s, just moving into the 1980s, you wouldn't have found as many assembly types in insulation values in the south as high as those in the north. That was done out of necessity, not as a code requirement.

Moving through the decades, new technologies have come out and new understandings of trying to increase energy efficiency, making tighter envelopes, a requirement for mechanical ventilation. As all these things started to move into the building code, they were maintained up here, but I think they were slightly ahead of that curve going back to the pre-2000 days. However, that said, that's the envelope. It doesn't necessarily mean that the buildings in the north were all built better than buildings in the south. I'm just saying that the concentration on energy, in the form of warmth, was a key component.

As you know, in terms of the built environment infrastructure energy usage, not every community in Nunavut is connected. There are all of these isolated communities. For a secure powered heat source, they depend on diesel-generated fuel. The Qulliq Energy Corporation is the government body that maintains and delivers electricity. It maintains power generator stations in every one of the 25 communities in Nunavut. These generators go back, once again, to pre-Nunavut days.

Many of the operations and maintenance requirements are outdated and in need of replacement. Diesel is what is generating the electricity, so when you turn on your lights in your house, that electricity is coming from diesel. In terms of the idea of reducing the carbon footprint in a jurisdiction like Nunavut, the greatest impact surely has to deal with where that diesel is mainly generated, which is at the QEC level, the pure generation level.

When it comes down to the individual units, which we deal with at the Nunavut Housing Corporation, whether we deal with specific energy upgrades, components, and efficiencies to use less energy per unit, it's very important to understand where this energy is really being generated and its source is at the diesel generation point.

That said, our current approach is to try to maintain a very high-efficiency assembly for our houses. We're the public housing agency. We deliver approximately 100 new public housing units per year, and there are roughly 5,000 public housing units in the territory overall. Our emphasis on new construction has to do with a highly energy-efficient envelope, which is air tight. We maintain the R-2000 standard, in terms of blower door testing of 1.5 maximum air changes, at the time of completion, and most of our units only have 0.5 air changes per hour when we occupy them. They're all mechanically ventilated, with two layers of insulation to prevent thermal bridging.

We had our units assessed. It was a theoretical or desktop assessment of the actual building assembly through the NRCAN HOT2000 modelling program, and the assembly types that were being built in 2013 all came in at the range of 82 to 84. A score of 80 is a new home, with a high energy-efficient rating, based on the NRCAN rating scale.

Our assemblies are the same or better than back in 2013. As each year goes by, with our O and M challenges in maintaining and changing out these buildings, we try to alter the design to suit how people up here are actually working on them to make them more usable. The whole maintenance aspect, as well as the availability of materials, also affects the design.

A key line we tend to follow here is state of industry versus state of the art. What I mean by that is the availability of materials, skill sets, and technology to be applied in a remote situation has much more sustainability to it than trying something new. If it breaks down and the stock resource of that is very limited, say a single supplier or even another country as the supplier, the time lag and expertise to understand and operate are all considerations, as we try to introduce new technology.

We have to upgrade as time goes along, but our approach has been to focus mostly on state of industry and availability of products and materials versus trying out new things that have very limited backdrop in terms of their applicability.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay.

[Gary Wong]

One thing we would love to see—

Okay. Sorry, is that it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

No. You have a minute. I just wanted to let you know that you need to be coming to the end of it. Thanks.

[Gary Wong]

I was going to say that one thing that we would love to see, because people approach us fairly often with new ideas and new approaches, is more research and development being done on these products at the federal level. They don't necessarily always have to be done in the north. If they're being done as assemblies, approaches, or the longevity-type of material, and they want to test down south, they can be tested in a lab-type setting, in a controlled wind-tunnel type setting, built down south, and then left to age in the elements to give some kind of understanding of their applicability versus always looking at trying to do it as a pilot project in the north, where you don't necessarily have the personnel to do the monitoring, to maintain good data, as well as to do any follow-up that's necessary on it. We'd like to see more of that understanding from research and development and what can be done within and outside the territory.

It's great that CHARS, the High Arctic research station, now exists, and I think these discussions probably will begin around it.

Okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Yes, and I hate to cut you off, because I'm sure you have a lot more to share with us, but I'm hoping that will come out in the questioning.

[Gary Wong]

No problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much. Please stay with us, because we're going to get to questions after the next two speakers.

The next up will be Alain Fournier, and thank you very much.

[Alain Fournier, Architect, Founding Partner, EVOQ Architecture]

Bonjour. I thank the honourable members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for inviting me to share my thoughts and experience. In my previous appearance before the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples in 2016, I specifically shared my thoughts and experiences working with Inuit and first nation communities, so there's definitely some overlap with what Gary just expressed.

I just have a few words about my firm, EVOQ, and me, for those who don't know me—and most of you don't. EVOQ is one of Canada's leading architectural firms. For more than 35 years, we've been recognized for our work with Inuit and first nations and heritage conservation. Our approach is collaborative, working closely with each client and community to achieve their vision. Our architects also lecture at universities, participate in design review panels, and lead various organizations.

EVOQ has received numerous awards for its work, and its portfolio includes a number of high-profile buildings, including the West Block here in Ottawa—don't ask me when that will be complete—Union Station in Toronto; the nearly completed LEED gold Canadian High Arctic research station, or the CHARS, in Ikaluktutiak/Cambridge Bay in Nunavut; as well as the LEED silver Kuujjuaq air terminal in Nunavik.

More questions were forwarded to me to prepare for this appearance. I've been looking at them from the point of view of someone living in a remote Inuit or first nation community, as I had presumed this was the reason for inviting me to appear before this committee, given my experience with Inuit and first nations. To initiate the discussion, I will start by pointing out a number of issues that need to be addressed, that make up the whole picture when considering the environment and sustainable development. It's not just about bells and whistles and developing new gadgets; the approach must be comprehensive and holistic.

I've grouped these three issues under the following three general headings, what I would call prerequisites, objectives, and support initiatives. Prerequisites are essentially to be able to move forward. Basic infrastructure and housing needs must be met. It's very difficult to get anybody's attention about reducing greenhouse gas emissions when even their most basic infrastructure needs are not met. That is point one.

If any programs or initiatives are to work, we must get community buy-in and engagement. One size does not fit all. We must take into consideration regional and cultural specificities, and that includes all across the Inuit Nunangat territories. We have Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, and Nunavut that have different governance, different structures, different environments. Then, as part of the prerequisites, culturally adapted infrastructures and housing can only be designed and built through proper dialogue with the communities. Lastly, in the prerequisites, you must prepare for climate change and develop strategies. We have to anticipate what's coming, and in the north specifically, it's there.

Coming to objectives, the second group of issues—and many of them will cover what Gary just said—we must reduce dependency on costly fossil fuel energy and replace it with renewable sources of energy. Some R and D has been going on and will go on, and the CHARS is supposed to be one of the places that will favour such research. We must improve energy efficiency and maintain it throughout the infrastructure's life cycle. This is much more challenging than it may appear. What works on the opening day will falter later for lack of proper upkeep, so we may have a very well-performing infrastructure, but if the systems aren't maintained properly, then we've lost it all.

We must build local construction capacity, and that also means local construction and maintenance capacity, ideally aimed toward self-sufficiency. Why not? We can dream. Of course, we must reduce maintenance costs. Construction in remote communities is expensive, so let's go for heavy-duty and durable materials, such that we don't have to go back constantly to repair them. Lastly is what I would call support initiatives; support research for what I call real innovation. Innovation mustn't just be a buzzword. Innovation is too often hamstrung with a proviso that it be achieved with proven technology.

I could quote from many requests for proposals in which we were asked to be innovative, but whose second sentence or next page told us to do so with proven technology. Of course, man would not have walked on the moon if they had taken the proven technology from the 1950s. If we're going to talk about innovation, we must be serious about innovation; it shouldn't be just about paying it lip service.

We should support industry research and development. In remote northern communities, of course, the infrastructure and housing markets are very small, and they offer little incentive for development. I think this is an area where the government could come with support, and again, with the CHARS being there, it will be possible to test equipment up north in the Arctic.

We should support the documentation, post-construction monitoring—and I do underline post-construction monitoring—and sharing of best design and construction practices. As we design, we will make assumptions, evaluations, and do lots of modelling—it's also a popular buzzword—but what actually happens in the field? How do our buildings and infrastructures perform in the field? That's very important to find out. There again, supports should be coming towards post-construction monitoring. Of course, you have to understand that construction in the Arctic and in remote communities is extremely expensive, so when it comes down to putting in those last dollars to install monitoring systems in the infrastructures, whether it's for housing or other buildings, it falls through. There is no money, and yet it would be very important to do it.

The last point, which I already mentioned, is that we should support the cost of construction and supply proper funding. This goes back to point one, which is that if there's a permanent housing crisis going on in Inuit and first nation communities, of course, given some money, they will favour building those houses, and they don't want to cut the funds.... Build more expensive houses such that three, four, or five families in that given year have to be told that they're not on the list, because building those houses is a little more expensive because they perform better.

Merci.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much. You still have a couple of minutes, if there's anything else you'd like share with us.

[Alain Fournier]

That's fine. I'll leave the time to my colleague, and there will be more time for discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That's good. Thank you very much.

Next up we have Mr. Hewitt, please.

[Thomas Hewitt, President, Netzero Construction]

Thank you.

My name is Thomas Hewitt. I'm coming to this from a very different perspective. I'm a local builder. I built net zero homes, and my company is called Netzero Construction. Before that, I spent almost a decade working in solar power, mostly under the Fit program in Ontario, but also in Belgium, California, and New Jersey under a bunch of different other incentive programs down there.

First and foremost, I want everybody to understand that net zero buildings are being built, and they're being built locally. Mostly, they're in the custom home range. These are clients who already have a bit of expendable income to put towards their homes and are choosing to put that towards high efficiency and net zero homes. There was one question that I think most people were asking, which is what exactly is the premium involved in doing this type of construction. In my line of work, in custom homes, it's about 10% to get the buildings from what would be considered an R-2000 range down to what we build, which is sort of in the passive house range.

A normal home uses about 100 to 120 kilowatt hours per metre squared, and we drop that down to 15—basically, 15% or less of what a current home is using in terms of electricity needs. Again, that's about a 10% increase in the cost of the home. On top of that, we try to offset the electricity that the home is using with solar power in this particular region. That adds an additional 5% to the cost of the home. Those are the current economics. If you look at a home that's roughly 2000 square feet, the extra mortgage payment at 3% is roughly $2,000 or $2,100, and you're saving 19 or 20 back on your energy usage. It's almost to the point where we're at parity in terms of the savings versus cost increase when you amortize it over the 20 to 25 years of your mortgage.

I just want to talk a bit about the barriers we're facing as people wanting to do the right thing—and there are a number of them. The first thing I want to talk about is the lack of appropriate standards for certain equipment, certain components of residential homes right now.

Windows are foremost on my list. Right now, we're importing all of our windows from Europe—from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and a number of other countries. Those windows are roughly three times better than what we can get here, and we're currently paying less for them, imported, than we can get a high-quality window here in North America. I don't know the reason for that, but I think mostly it's because the standards in Europe have been rated so highly. That high-performance window is standard in Europe. Here, it is not. It is custom. I believe if we simply raise the standards over a period of time, that level of cost effectiveness will come to Canada.

The second item is heat recovery ventilators. Again, there's a huge lack of efficiency, and we're importing them mostly from Germany right now and a few other countries in the world.

The other things we're having trouble with are building permits and inspections. Currently, the NBC is very specific in terms of what exactly you need to build, and how you need to build it. Unfortunately, some of the more innovative things that we're doing these days are not covered under the building code, and as such, we are being turned down in both the building permit process and in the inspection process.

Another problem we're having is structural limitations. For example, when we go to put solar panels on the rooftop of a building, the building can't take the load. It's a very, very minimal load, but it can't take it. We basically just can't put anything on the roof, and we move on to the next one.

Something I really want to talk about is the profits being made by utilities. I know that may be a little pointed, but I just want to provide an example.

Ottawa Hydro, right now, has what's called a net metering program where you can generate electricity and provide it to the grid, and you can do that at any time of the year. For example, during the summer you can create a lot of electricity, and then you can basically buy that electricity back in the middle of winter. In some parts of Canada, this service is provided free. Quebec provides it free, I believe, and certain jurisdictions in Alberta do. In Ottawa, you have to pay a fee for this service, in addition to a connection fee. What that does is offset all the possible payback of your system for the first two kilowatts of your solar system. This, to me, is just not acceptable and is something that should be changed.

In addition to this, there are things called connection cost assessments, which add additional costs. In some cases, we're refused connection from the utilities, for which, with residential systems, there's really no scientific basis, in my opinion.

After complaining, I'd like to say there's some very simple solutions to this. I tried to look at this from a federal point of view, and I do believe that we should continue to raise mandatory energy requirements on new buildings and substantial renovations in the National Building Code. The last series of the National Building Code came out with what I consider a voluntary energy efficiency, which I don't believe is really a good thing. Those should be mandatary, and that will push builders to make better buildings. When everybody starts doing that, the cost of those buildings will come down because of mass utilization of materials and processes.

The second thing is this. I was talking earlier about having problems with building permits, and there's a very simple solution to this. Right now, in residential construction, we use part 9 of the building code, but if there's a particular structural beam or something of the sort that does not comply with part nine, we refer to part 4, which basically says that if a structural engineer looks at it and says it's okay, it's okay. I suggest the exact same thing for building science. Basically, vapour barriers and building assemblies should have the exact same requirements. So if you're doing something out of the ordinary and it's signed off by a building sciences engineer, then that should be A-okay and inspectors should let that go.

Another very simple thing to do in terms of solar panels is to add five PSF, that's pounds per square foot, to the requirements for new home buildings for their rooftops. That will take care of all problems with solar in the future. All buildings built from that day forward will have the necessary capacity to allow for the future expansion of solar panels.

In terms of utilities—and we see this in other countries with what they call the right to connect—from a federal point of view, I believe every resident of Canada should have a right to connect to the grid and feed in solar power or power from hydroelectric or anything like that, and the utilities should not be allowed to apply fees to that.

In addition to that, they have to take a very close look at connection costs and connection assessments. These things are well understood in other countries but have not been researched to their fullest extent here, especially in Ontario. I really do believe that if that's looked at more closely, then anybody and everybody should be able to connect to the grid, with very little impact.

Finally, from a federal incentive point of view, there are two things I would like to see. First is something like, perhaps, a federally backed mortgage rate. I don't know if that's possible, but if it were, even a 0.5% decrease on mortgage rates would compensate for the extra paid for a building. That would be a very big incentive and I think we'd see a lot more people building that way. Second, of course, is a federal tax credits program. This was done in the U.S., where there's a 30% tax credit for any solar system. I think it's actually just for solar systems right now. That's been extended for the last 12 years, and that is what has spurred solar in the United States. If we could do a similar program here in Canada, I believe it would spur the same type of development.

That's all I really have to say. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to my opinions. Cheers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much for sharing them with us. We appreciate it.

Before I move to questions, I'd like to welcome Dane Lloyd and Richard Cannings to the committee. Thank you, both, very much for being here.

We'll start with Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here, and to Mr. Wong on the phone.

It's funny, Mr. Hewitt, you finished with “That's all I really have to say.” I'm scribbling things down so quickly. Because of the time limit, my questions are not nearly going to reflect the questions I have in my head and how many I would like to ask you, so maybe some time you'll go for a beer with me.

[Thomas Hewitt]

Absolutely.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'll start with Mr. Hewitt.

Net zero national codes are expected in the early 2020s. Is net zero something that's going to be feasible in the north? We heard Mr. Wong talk about some of the barriers. What are some of the barriers for us to get there in the north? We think about communities being run on diesel.

By the way, in the Nova Scotia Community College in Dartmouth, on the waterfront campus, they're doing a really cool project where they have a truck container totally equipped as a solar—almost like a district energy facility. They can put it on the back of a truck and then ship it up to the north. I think that's really cool. If Mr. Wong is listening, I'm not sure if he knows about that, but it's a pretty cool idea.

What are some of the barriers faced by the territories, the northern communities, to ever get to where you are now in advance of the codes?

[Thomas Hewitt]

It's really an interesting question. I haven't built up north, but I can say that from what I've seen, anything that is active requires maintenance. For example, there was a lot of buzz about geothermal and solar thermal—and even solar photoelectric panels, which I do a lot of—all of which require maintenance. They are all active systems that basically degrade over time. The things that we do for energy efficiency, for example, building a building better, thicker, and more air-tight, don't require any maintenance and stand the test of time. For me, up north, I think that is first and foremost the thing we need to do: reduce the amount of energy required. Can we offset it with solar power up north? No, there's no possible way. However, battery power is definitely becoming increasingly feasible, and perhaps a mix of wind and diesel or wind and another source will provide the offsetting that's required.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Is battery technology improving quickly enough for those codes in 2022-23?

[Thomas Hewitt]

Absolutely—and in terms of cost, too.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Obviously one of the barriers would be the availability of materials. Mr. Wong spoke to that.

Mr. Fournier, based on the challenges we just talked about, it's interesting to me because I hadn't really contemplated achieving energy efficiency through pure architecture. We've heard numerous times at this committee, from different panels here, that private industry and innovation is outpacing government. We know that codes are more guidelines than strict regulations. Then you have the jurisdictional issues, where the provinces and the territories can take what the federal government offers and either exceed it or not exceed it. They can go below it. What are some of the things you're doing in the architectural world purely for energy efficiency?

[Alain Fournier]

In direct connection to what's just been said, we worked on a pilot house in a community called Quaqtaq in Nunavik to try to achieve a passive house standard. The idea was to push the envelope and see what it would require. Was it possible, first, and then what would it require? As far north as it is, we have to deal with the weather, of course, the climate, which is extremely cold. That's the first stumbling block, but we did come across the same issues. We have a high-performing energy envelope, but the doors and windows were extremely expensive. Had they not been so expensive, we could have said that now all of the northern houses would be equipped with these top-of-the-line doors and windows, but they're not, because they're too expensive.

It's an ongoing innovation. If we manage to develop more performing insulation, thinner and more performing, that will certainly reduce the cost or bring the cost of a wall composition, roof, or floor to something that's reasonable. Right now our experience with this pilot house was that, in order to achieve a passive house, we had to have a massive wall, with massive insulation. We had to bring it down to something reasonable that could be built within a reasonable budget, but in the end, it was more expensive than your run of the mill.... We're almost there, but we're not quite there yet. There's no question that industry needs to be pushed, and I think that's where the federal government has to come on board to continue to maintain the work on these innovations.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Hewitt used the example of windows that were three times better at a lower price than what exists here, so your example of bringing along industry to do what we need to do to get there, that's....

[Thomas Hewitt]

Just as a point of clarification, I'm talking about high-performance windows for custom homes, which is very different from a budget window for a place in—