Environment Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

We will begin.

Hello, everybody. This is meeting 47 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

I'd like to welcome our newest member to the committee: MP Jonathan Rowe.

Welcome. It's nice to have you here.

For those who are here in person, please remember to follow the health and safety guidelines, as per the cards on the table, to prevent audio or feedback incidents.

Today, we're going to be starting our study on retrofits for home energy efficiency, but before we get started, I want to cover the matter of the budget ask for attending COP31 as a committee.

The clerk has distributed a draft budget, with details, to apply to the Liaison Committee to obtain funds so we can participate in COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, in November. Are there any questions on the draft budget to put forward for proposal?

Monsieur Bonin.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you for this initiative, Madam Chair.

I did some quick calculations and found that the amount per member of Parliament is relatively high. Would it be possible to show us the forecasts that led to this figure? I think that we should clearly identify the figure as a maximum amount and that, ideally, we should try to lower costs. However, I haven't seen the forecasts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Monsieur Bonin, the clerk's office put this together. Because of the long flight, we chose the more comfortable flight option for members who would be travelling, but this would be the maximum amount. It was based on estimates of all the costs that would be part of the trip. This is the ask that we would have to put forward to the Liaison Committee to see if they are willing to entertain the proposal.

I need committee approval to even make the ask. Then there can be a negotiation of the budget. Should there be areas to save in, we would obviously look into those, but we want to make sure we're doing the proper ask.

Mr. St-Pierre.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

I would like to raise two points that echo the comments made by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois.

First, I would like to see a breakdown of the amounts. If we can minimize the costs to taxpayers, we should do so.

Second, sometimes during these trips, there are interpretation costs. So I would like to know whether these costs would be included. I think that the costs for interpretation from English to French would be quite significant. On our end, we think that this isn't essential.

In short, I tend to agree with my colleague that we should see about reducing expenses. Like a number of my colleagues here today, I've attended the COP before, albeit with a somewhat more limited budget. I'm quite open to the idea of setting a cap on this amount and lowering the costs, if possible, for Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. St‑Pierre.

The amount requested is for six people. We can look into this further. However, there must be a consensus to make the request.

Are there any other questions?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this budget proposal to make the ask of the Liaison Committee?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

That's wonderful. Thank you. We will do that.

We will now turn to our study on retrofits for home energy efficiency.

We have witnesses in both hours. In person here today, we have Maya Papineau, associate professor of economics. Online, we have Charles De Land, vice-president, research, Canada West Foundation.

Each witness will have five minutes to provide opening remarks. I have a little reminder for when you're at one minute and for when you're out of time and should please wrap up, in case that's helpful.

We will begin with Madame Papineau.

[Maya Papineau, Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the members of the committee for the invitation to appear today. My name is Maya Papineau. I'm an associate professor of economics at Carleton University, where my research program focuses on environmental and energy economics.

Much of my research asks a simple question: How can Canada reduce greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring that the policies we adopt deliver tangible benefits to Canadian households? Motivated by my work, I would like to make three points about reducing emissions from Canada's buildings.

First, we need to both design and evaluate energy efficiency investment programs based on what they actually achieve for Canadian households rather than what simulation models predict they will achieve. In recently published research I co-authored, we examined Canada's ecoENERGY retrofit program using detailed household-level data. This was a predecessor to Canada's greener homes program. We found that participating households reduced natural gas consumption by 20% and that those savings persisted for at least a decade. Households undertaking comprehensive building envelope retrofits reduced consumption by about 35%.

Those are substantial savings, but we also found something that should be important for the design of future federal programs. The savings that households experienced were substantially smaller than the savings predicted for them before they undertook the retrofit. Across retrofits, realized energy savings were only about 60% of model predictions. For comprehensive envelope retrofits, realized savings were less than half of predictions. This matters, because households make investment decisions based partly on expected savings. If we overestimate those savings, we risk overstating both the private financial benefits of retrofits and their contribution to emissions reductions.

Prior research from the U.S. has found a similar performance gap. One study found that differences in contractor workmanship accounted for roughly 43% of the gap between projected versus realized energy savings. This points to an important lesson for Canada: We need evidence on which approaches to contractor training, certification and quality assurance contribute to improvements in energy performance. Otherwise, we risk spending more public and private money without achieving the expected energy savings or emissions reductions.

Second, affordability needs to be a central measure of whether building decarbonization is succeeding. As households electrify heating and transportation, electricity becomes the principal energy carrier for more essential energy services. This makes the distributional consequences of electricity prices increasingly important. Our research on the ecoENERGY program found significant variation in the benefits households attained. Some households spent significant amounts of their own money on retrofits that produced considerably smaller bill savings than predicted. At the same time, retrofit rebates were distributed relatively evenly across the housing wealth distribution rather than being concentrated among households likely to face the greatest affordability constraints.

Research from several countries has found that higher household electricity costs have been associated with lower public support for ambitious clean energy policies, while other studies have found that the political costs of climate policy depend, importantly, on policy design and whether households are protected from regressive impacts. As decarbonization proceeds, we need to measure what happens to the total amount that households spend to heat their homes and obtain other energy services, as well as how these costs are distributed.

This brings me to my third point. We need much better real-world evidence as building decarbonization and electrification scale up. Engineering-economic models are indispensable for planning, don't get me wrong, but they rely on assumptions about technology performance, adoption and consumer behaviour. Large-scale retrofit programs should therefore also be treated as opportunities to gain insights. Governments and utilities should, with appropriate privacy protections, facilitate research using high-quality data on actual energy consumption, technology adoption, electricity system investments, tariffs and household expenditures. This would allow us to identify which combinations of retrofits, rate design, workforce development and targeted assistance deliver the greatest social benefits.

I will close with three principles for federal building policy. First, measure real-world outcomes. Evaluate programs using realized energy savings, emissions reductions and household financial benefits. Second, invest in people. Workforce training and quality assurance evaluations should be treated as part of climate policy. Third, make affordability a key part of measuring success. Track total household energy expenditures and their distribution, not electricity prices in isolation.

Canada can substantially reduce emissions from its buildings, but durable progress will depend on whether these investments perform in the real world and whether their benefits are experienced in people's homes and household budgets.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Ms. Papineau.

We will turn now to Mr. De Land for five minutes.

Just as a reminder, please do not speak overly quickly for the interpreters.

[Charles De Land, Vice-President, Research, Canada West Foundation]

Okay. I'll try.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Charles De Land. I am the vice-president of research at the Canada West Foundation. Thanks for the opportunity to appear today.

The Canada West Foundation is a non-partisan think tank focused on a stronger, more united and prosperous west and Canada. While I'm pleased to represent the foundation, the research informing my remarks was largely undertaken before I joined the organization.

My remarks draw on two pieces of research I co-authored: a 2022 study of the practical implications of replacing gas and oil heating in Canadian homes and a recent comparison of electricity prices across Canada. My main message is straightforward. Canada should pursue lower-energy home use, lower emissions and more resilient homes through cost-effective, performance-based policy. The objective should not be to prescribe one technology, ban one energy source or assume that additional subsidies are the answer in every case.

Space and water heating account for virtually all direct residential emissions. Measures such as air sealing, insulation and more efficient equipment can reduce the energy needed to keep a home safe and comfortable. They can also reduce the size and cost of any heating equipment a household chooses.

The scale and cost of fully electrifying residential space and water heating should be understood. Our 2022 scenario estimated that electrifying space and water heating in Canada's emitting homes by 2050 would require more than 400,000 retrofits annually. This is a scenario estimate, not a forecast or prescription. Its value is simply to illustrate the challenge, which is that a single technology approach would be costly, operationally demanding and unlikely to be the least-cost solution.

Fuel costs and reliability also matter. My recent electricity price analysis, which I co-authored, found substantial provincial differences in system costs, reflecting resource endowment differences, legacy infrastructure, market design, regulation and public policy. In 2023, for example, the latest year of our study, estimated normalized system costs ranged from approximately $76 per megawatt hour in Quebec to $225 in Alberta. That's since dropped quite a bit.

Heat pumps could be a good option in many homes, especially when paired with insulation and air sealing, but electricity is not equally affordable, reliable or available in every province, community or season. Policy should avoid fuel bans and should not require a single fuel choice. In some circumstances, high-efficiency gas equipment or hybrid systems combining a heat pump with a gas furnace may reduce emissions at lower upfront costs, preserve reliable heating during extreme cold and help manage winter electricity peaks.

Quality matters. The same retrofit measure can produce very different results depending on the building, the quality of its assessment and design, the installation, the commissioning and the contractor skill. Publicly supported programs should focus on verified results, not simply on the number of grants, assessments or installed devices.

New construction deserves attention as well. It's typically less costly to incorporate a high-performance building envelope, heating equipment and sufficient electrical capacity up front during design and construction than it is to retrofit them later. Better new homes can avoid future retrofit costs and better protect buyers from high energy bills.

I offer five principles for the consideration of this committee.

First, set performance outcomes for energy use, emissions, affordability, comfort, resilience and reliability rather than fuel-specific mandates.

Second, measure value for money. Assess costs per gigajoule saved and per tonne of emissions reduced alongside effects on energy bills, peak electricity demand, comfort and resilience. This assessment should also include the administrative and time burdens on governments and households in accessing these programs.

Third, prevent future retrofit costs through better new construction and transparent consumer information.

Fourth, preserve consumer choice among technologies and energy sources that meet transparent performance standards and suit household circumstances.

Fifth, use public support selectively where genuine barriers exist. These include, for example, low incomes, tenant-landlord split incentives, remote and northern conditions, and health and safety needs that ordinary market incentives don't capture. Broad subsidy programs should demonstrate public benefits and not merely shift costs from energy bills to taxpayers.

In short, Canada needs a practical, transparent and regionally flexible approach to home energy efficiency to help Canadians reduce energy use and emissions at the lowest reasonable cost, while maintaining reliability, affordability and choice.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. De Land.

We will now go to questions by members. We will start with Mr. Leslie for six minutes.

It's over to you.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll start with you, Professor Papineau.

I understand that you did a paper recently called “Household benefits from energy efficiency retrofits”, where you compared the savings that were predicted before the work was done with what people actually saved on their energy bill. One of the highlights I see here is that the actual natural gas savings were only about 60% of what was predicted. Is that correct?

[Maya Papineau]

That's right.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

In terms of the deeper, whole energy envelope, the gap is even bigger. Is that correct?

[Maya Papineau]

For whole envelope retrofits, yes, it is.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

What are some of the retrofits that you found were much less effective for the homeowner who's looking to make those investments?

[Maya Papineau]

The least effective retrofits were basement insulation and windows and doors in particular.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Windows and doors....

[Maya Papineau]

There are two types of basement insulation. There's basement header, and then there's the basement foundation insulation. Both of those were statistically zero, if I recall correctly, and windows and doors had statistically zero savings.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I appreciate that. I was a little surprised about the windows and doors—

[Maya Papineau]

Many people are.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

—but I appreciate the work you've done on this.

The government is saying that its new retrofit program currently under way could save households between $300 and $1,700 a year. How should Canadians treat those proposed savings? Are they really just—based on the data that you've outlined here—estimates until we check the real-world bill afterward?

[Maya Papineau]

Currently, the model-based approach is still the most predominant way to offer information to Canadians about the savings from energy efficiency and other climate policy investments. Colleagues and I have approached many different government department staff to suggest a more effective way to design policies. That builds into what I mentioned in my opening remarks. As we're scaling up and as we're deploying energy efficiency programs and other energy programs, we should be building in an evaluation mechanism to get those numbers right and to deliver those benefits to Canadian households.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

As far as you know right now—your study looked at 20,000 houses, it looks like—is any of that built in at all under the current program that's being delivered to the provinces, to deliver the actual program to contractors?

[Maya Papineau]

At present, no, there's not been any change. I will qualify that. We had 20,000 houses. These were all the single-family homes in a city in Alberta, in Medicine Hat. Just under 1,500, I believe, ended up retrofitting, so we had data on 1,500—everybody who participated in that program. There weren't 20,000 folks who retrofitted.