Environment Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bexte.

Mr. St‑Pierre, you now have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome the newest member from Newfoundland, who represents The Eastern Peninsulas. He's replacing another member from Newfoundland, so I'm excited to have him here.

I would also like to say hello to my riding neighbour in Montreal, the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, and thank him for replacing our colleague from Repentigny.

I'll be sharing part of my time with the MP for Kitchener—Conestoga.

Ms. Cloutier, thank you very much for joining us today.

As Mayor Vrbanovic said, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, or FCM, has spent a lot of time on the FIME program, the Financement innovateur pour des municipalités efficaces, which is the French equivalent of the PACE funding model, for property assessed clean energy. It's quite an interesting program.

Could you start by telling us about the pilot projects the FCM has participated in under the FIME program?

I also have a question that is perhaps more important.

How can we scale the PACE financing programs?

[Marieke Cloutier]

Mr. St‑Pierre, do you want me to answer in French or English?

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

You can answer in the language of your choice.

[Marieke Cloutier]

Okay.

First, allow me to give a nod to your Conservative Party colleague regarding the question he asked earlier.

I want to mention that in our community efficiency financing program, we're looking at the results that have been achieved, and they're being verified. We're calculating them.

Regarding our community efficiency program at the green municipal fund, you were talking about how we are measuring results and what kind of savings households could realize. We calculated the results that have been achieved, and the anticipated result—it's built into our program—is approximately a 30% average household energy cost saving when using our municipal programs.

Also, we're verifying the pre and post retrofit energy guide assessments done by registered energy advisers. Municipalities also provide annual reporting for their programs on loan portfolios and program performance, and at the end, we have an independent third party evaluation that validates results and program outcomes.

For example, a better homes Kingston evaluation found an average 66% reduction of GHGs per home, and 36% of participants would not have retrofitted their homes without the program.

I wanted to give you an example of how we calculate the results within our program and have them verified.

To answer your question, Mr. St‑Pierre, regarding the PACE funding model, it is really a key element of our FIME program. It is one of the financial measures people can use to make home energy-efficient retrofits.

However, it's important to know that there are other financial models that may also work. As we know, we can't have a one-size-fits-all model, but we have noted a lot of interest for PACE-type programs. When municipalities launch such a program, all the spots are often taken as early as the first morning. The results speak for themselves.

We are also creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs to help municipalities develop their internal capacity. It is not just a matter of providing the funds, that is to say the loan itself, which is drawn out over time and linked to the property, and which evens out the cost and reduces the risk. It's also about creating a market and having credible sources of information for citizens, so they don't have to figure out for themselves how to disentangle all the offers that are in front of them. Support is provided. It also creates internal stability, by not just turning to programs that follow certain cycles.

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

Okay.

I have a minute and a half left.

I'm going to pass my time to the member for Kitchener—Conestoga.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. St‑Pierre.

Through you, Chair, I'll talk to Mr. Vrbanovic.

Mayor, municipalities—I spoke with Madame Cloutier—know their housing stock. They understand the barriers residents face. Municipalities play a critical role in delivering their climate and affordability solutions. As we invest in home retrofits, I'd like to focus my questions on this federal-municipal partnership.

Mayor Vrbanovic, you recently became chair of the green municipal fund council, which oversees the funding supporting communities. Can you highlight for this committee a few real-world examples of the green municipal fund's successful initiatives and how partnerships and the federal government and municipalities, working together, are helping advance energy efficiency, affordability and climate action?

[Berry Vrbanovic]

Thank you very much, Mr. Louis.

As you've noted, the GMF has been around for about 26 years. It has really been instrumental in delivering measurable economic and environmental results across Canada for more than two decades. During that time, we've seen an impact of approximately $5.6 billion in GDP, $3.1 billion in wages and salaries, nearly 60,000 person years of employment and more than three million tonnes of greenhouse gas reductions. Those are real results that are impacting Canadian municipalities and, quite frankly, through programs like PACE, Canadians from an affordability point of view as well.

The other thing to think about when we talk about the GMF is that it's really about more than the impact on the climate. We're supporting everything from retrofitting affordable housing and municipal buildings to developing local clean energy systems, tree planting efforts and helping communities prepare for floods, wildfires and other climate risks. These are realities that municipalities face and can't deal with on their own.

It's a wonderful example of what can be achieved when two different orders of government work together on behalf of the ratepayers we all serve.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Mayor Vrbanovic.

Thank you, members.

Mr. Beaulieu, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question is for the Canada Green Building Council representative.

The application period for the Canada greener homes loan program offered by Natural Resources Canada is now closed. What are the consequences of that period now being closed?

What is the impact on homeowners, energy efficiency advisers in the renewable energy sector and businesses in that field?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Go ahead, Mr. Mueller.

[Thomas Mueller]

Thank you for the question.

On the closure of the program, I looked at the programs the government currently has in place, and it's hard to say what the impacts are. For us, it's a question of whether the right programs are in place to support homeowners in their retrofit efforts.

What's really important to us, because there are many programs out there at different levels of government, is that these programs are properly stacked. For example, the programs the federal government provides, even the investment.... Let's say the federal government provides to Build Canada Homes what's being done in the national housing strategy. It's important that these programs are well aligned and they're what we call stackable so that there is no redundancy in there, but there's also less fragmentation.

If you're an owner of an apartment building and you want to do a retrofit, depending on where you are, you have to navigate different rules and different situations. It makes it so much more difficult in terms of really figuring out what you need in investment and capital to upgrade your building.

The alignment of rules and the alignment of programs, particularly, are very important.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

The Canada greener homes loan program, which is a new government program, is only for the lowest-income people. Is it enough to reduce buildings sector emissions?

What are the remaining incentives for the middle class?

[Thomas Mueller]

For the existing housing stock in Canada, there needs to be significant investment across the board, from single family homes to multi-family homes, to bring them up to a higher level of performance in terms of energy efficiency in order to align with the national electricity strategy. It's also important to upgrade these homes now; there's a climate impact imperative now. These projects are being upgraded to protect occupants from climate events. Our target particularly.... We know that populations at the lower end of the income scale are disproportionately affected. They're also affected by energy poverty when it comes to keeping their homes either cool or warm, depending on the season.

It's really important to keep in mind the target programs that have a duality—energy efficiency in order to meet our new objectives and the protection of public health in housing that is currently not suitable—to meet that challenge. There needs to be, I would say, more investment. I would start particularly with those at the lower end of the income scale because they have the least ability to live in adequate housing. This would also affect the middle class. We are all affected by it. The investments and the programs need to be targeted at these groups and with regard to their specific needs, of course. They need to look different; they can't be the same.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you.

I have a question for the representatives of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

In April 2024, the federal government transferred an additional $530 million to the green municipal fund, bringing the total investments to $2.155 billion. This funding is related to Canada's national adaptation strategy.

How much of that funding has been used to help Quebec municipalities?

[Marieke Cloutier]

Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Beaulieu.

That is one of our strategic factors to move towards representation by population. Last year, more investments were made in Quebec.

Another fairly important program is our net‑zero acceleration program, which is more focused on reducing greenhouse gases. It was created nearly a year ago. Since then, two new programs have also been offered to Quebec municipalities: the adaptation program and the growing Canada's community canopies program.

Municipalities are submitting their first applications because we negotiated an agreement with the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation to respect Quebec's jurisdiction in this area and to ensure that these programs were aligned with and complementary to the provincial government's existing programs.

You can be sure Quebec municipalities are very interested in these two programs. Projects have already started. There is a lot of enthusiasm.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Mr. Leslie for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to start with you, Ms. Cloutier. You mentioned in your previous response that the program is saving folks about 30% on average. Is this based on submitted energy bills before and after, or is it estimated?

[Marieke Cloutier]

It is based on what you just mentioned. Also, after doing what I've mentioned—we calculate the results that are anticipated, the actual results—then we have verification afterwards, pre and post retrofit, with the EnerGuide assessments that we're doing with registered energy advisers. This is how we came up with the average.

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

Is this delineated by...? Our previous witness basically said that all measures generally worked less than promised, but some—windows and doors—really don't work as well as I even thought. Is that broken down? Do you have that data? I assume 30% is an average. It's a nice round number.

[Marieke Cloutier]

Yes, we can share with you how it's broken down, but we have the average overall per household and—

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

Could you share that data, as well as the verification processes?

[Marieke Cloutier]

Of course.

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

It would be very helpful.

[Marieke Cloutier]

Yes. I also want to mention that some of the municipalities, through the PACE program, are putting in place special measures for low-income households. They don't necessarily need to go for a loan right away, but it would necessitate special measures, such as grants or different types of capacity building, to enable them to join the movement of home energy retrofits.