Environment Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[Maya Papineau]

The short answer is that I don't know. I have interdisciplinary projects and there are also engineers in the group. Personally, I'm not an expert on these models. With data, I work on regressions and statistical analyses. I also work on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and so on.

People are always saying that the model used is a bit outdated and that we should use a different one, for example. In my opinion, that won't solve the problem. Once again, it's an empirical question. Would a new model be useful or not?

[Tim Watchorn, Liberal, Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC]

I would like to ask you one last quick question.

Have you assessed whether the energy performance of prefabricated homes differs from the energy performance of homes built directly on site?

[Maya Papineau]

We don't have that data.

[Tim Watchorn, Liberal, Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC]

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Ms. Papineau, one of the things my colleague talked about was the Prévost regulations. The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal has taken action in this regard, and the Government of Quebec has also stated its intention. You seemed to say that we weren't really there yet, but from what I understand, electrification and heat pumps make financial sense for households.

What is preventing us from getting there? Other countries are moving on this. Why wouldn't Canada do the same when others are moving quickly, particularly in Quebec?

[Maya Papineau]

As I said earlier, we also have to think about how we are going to price energy, electricity.

It's a given that electricity consumption will increase significantly if we electrify, and a significant amount of new investment will need to be made in the electricity sector to meet that higher demand. We need to be able to identify what households are actually paying. It will vary by household. Some households don't have much ability to shift their demand from peak time.

In Quebec, there are many different pricing structures that have been tested to see to what extent people are shifting away from peak when they're paying a higher price at peak time. Unfortunately, the evidence so far finds that there's not much elasticity there. It's possible that people will still end up, under electrification, paying significantly more for their total energy bill. This is still an open question. If we get to that point, the will from the populace might not be there to support continued electrification. You don't want to get that backlash without identifying how much more electricity prices will go up.

Should the current model for passing on new grid investments be passed on immediately to ratepayers, or should they go to a system where taxpayers are shouldering a bit more of that? This is why I'm saying that we're not quite there yet in terms of having a market transformation program where we're making it illegal to purchase fossil-fuelled furnaces.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Could the government create an awareness campaign to inform the population? We need to give them a leg up. We can't wait for the population to take action when a number of countries are already moving on this.

[Maya Papineau]

It can't hurt, but…

It's the economy S-word.

If the price of electricity goes up a lot, even with energy efficiency measures, households that aren't able to make an energy transition—

My time is finished, but it's an open question whether or not people will be on board.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to Mr. Bexte for five minutes.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.

Welcome, colleagues, back to our committee and our study on home retrofits.

It's been a fascinating discussion so far. I have so many different new ideas and questions to pursue on this.

I feel our guest from the Canada West Foundation is feeling left out, so perhaps we'll start there.

I'll build on a point that was just made by Professor Papineau that I found fascinating. It's been percolating in my mind. There's the confluence of all of the things we have going on that we have to balance. How do we get the right balance in an electrification effort, with fuel switching and how those decisions are driven? The comment was that electrification—if I may paraphrase—may increase household costs, ultimately, if the grid isn't able to keep up with the demand. It's about the adoption rate of new technology or differences versus the generation, transmission and distribution capacity of the grid.

Could you comment on that, please?

[Charles De Land]

Sure. I assume you're talking to me.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes. Thank you.

[Charles De Land]

I don't feel too left out—Professor Papineau has been very fascinating—but thank you for the question.

In terms of the overall electricity system, I think there is something to your question. If demand rapidly outpaces supply, then you're obviously going to see prices go up. Conversely, if you have a massive overbuild that needs to be clawed back from ratepayers, that still has to be paid for.

Electricity can be very efficient in the right circumstances. Heat pumps can be a great solution for many homes. Overall, the study we did on electricity showed how different the prices were across the country, and it's not only the current prices. What consumers take into account is their expected prices. Are they going to remain stable? Are they going to go down? Are they going to go up? If people have an expectation that they're going to go high in the future, that's obviously going to go into their decision-making.

A track record of stability and signalling, and perhaps contracts for the future, would help consumers make those decisions to know what their future trade-off between the various sources of electricity would be, because these are long-lived investments.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

That's fair. Thank you.

I'll go back to Professor Papineau. It's the same thread. Part of that decision-making in a household, I think, is related to anxiety and changing to something different.

I wonder if there's been any collaboration with the insurance industry on insurance rates versus the technology deployed.

[Maya Papineau]

I'm not familiar with any, but that does not mean there hasn't been any.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Where I'm going with this is how we calculate risk. We calculate risk, usually, based on likelihood versus consequences to get a risk score. You brought up the Old Crow example. In rural Canada, the risk of electricity outages is much higher than in it is an urban setting. I don't have any statistics to back that up; it's anecdotal. It is where I live. Two or three times every winter, it goes out. If we depend solely on electricity to heat our homes and the power goes out, we have a problem. Hence, a backup is a requirement.

How does having two systems impact the economics of the overall system?

[Maya Papineau]

Do you mean for Old Crow in particular?

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I mean in general. You highlighted the Old Crow example, and I think that epitomizes what the issue is.

[Maya Papineau]

That's an example of what could happen if you're electrifying significantly and then there's.... There's a regulatory aspect here as well. If they're not able to get the okay to build more generation where they're located.... This is in the Yukon. As you said, it's very spread out. There's low population density. It's a question of whether or not the regulatory system can move along with us.

What I really want to underline—I didn't quite get to finish the point I was making to Monsieur Bonin—is that things like information programs to let folks know the benefits of electrification are great, but we definitely want to ensure that the monetary costs and reliability costs are in place and that the systems are in place to ensure that people will attain the benefits of electrification. Otherwise, we could have a very effective information program, but if folks are seeing higher outages and higher prices, they're going to be voting at the ballot box about that.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. Bexte.

Finally, we will turn to Mr. Grant for five minutes, please.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I will echo your welcome to our newest member, Mr. Rowe. I'm glad he's here with us.

Dr. Papineau, I have been listening to you for the last hour, and I have a few questions for you as well. When designing and improving the Canadian greener homes affordability program, what types of lessons should the federal government take from any previous home retrofit programs, do you think?

[Maya Papineau]

I'll be repetitive and say that the lesson is that the next iteration should build in an evaluation mechanism so that we can identify how to deliver the highest benefits possible to Canadian households from decarbonization and electrification.

Our findings that some insulation investments did not save any energy suggest that a targeting strategy can be adopted to give a targeted kind of retrofit pathway, just like the current program does. However, we can change that from the model-based approach to a hybrid approach where you're also using data from past participation. It has to be individual-level data and anonymized, with an anonymization procedure, which is very possible to put into place, so that there's no identifiable information. Build that into the program to learn how to get a targeted retrofit package that will maximize the savings to an individual house.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Like my colleague Mr. Ross, I come from a first nations community. When I was growing up, I lived in a house that was made in the 1960s. Now I live in a house that was made in the 1980s. One thing I noticed was that I was very cold in the winter and very hot in the summertime. I'm sure Mr. Ross was too.

That's still very prevalent among first nations. I was very surprised to hear that you don't have much data on first nations communities. Why is that?