Evidence of meeting #47 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
You were speaking in the past tense. However, the current program is limited to low‑income individuals.
Would it be better if there were at least something for the middle class?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
Absolutely. I think that the middle class should also receive rebates. However, our study showed that, while the middle‑class households participated in the program in large numbers, they received almost the minimum amount of energy savings. It really depends on the individual case. That's why I suggest that we carry out studies to identify and recommend
a set of rebates that will lead to the most savings for households.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
When you talk about your study, are you referring to the 2024 research that focused on the benefits for households?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
It was published in 2025.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Could you send the results of this research to the committee in writing?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
Absolutely.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you.
In your conclusion, for example, I think that you were referring to some regressive effects in certain areas.
Can you tell us about this?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
Yes.
We identified that, technically, the maximum rebates available to a household under this program—the same as in the greener homes initiative and possibly the current program, although I'm not as familiar with it—is $5,000. On average, we observed that people really underutilized the rebates relative to what they could get. They could get up to $5,000 on average, and this didn't vary across the wealth distribution, which is the regressive aspect. On average, households across the wealth distribution got about $1,100 in rebates. If you want to target lower-income households, you want to give higher rebates to lower-wealth and lower-income households.
Liberal
September 24th, 2026 / 4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Papineau, for that discussion. That was actually pretty interesting.
I was a labourer in the construction industry long ago. My brother is a Red Seal carpenter, and I was his right-hand man, but I got lectured endlessly on doing a good job at insulating houses. I very rarely got a passing grade for the reasons you just mentioned—just for efficiency on keeping the home warm. It's quite surprising to hear that insulation has better value for the homeowner, as opposed to a retrofit, although not right across the board, of course.
In your study, did you cover any households on reserve for first nations?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
We did not. We collaborated with the City of Medicine Hat, so everyone was within the city boundaries. We did not have access to data from any reserve, but we'd be happy to collaborate with reserves in the future. We are always looking for more partners.
I'm actually involved in a project in the Yukon. Yukon University is involved. There's a community called Old Crow in the Yukon that is having issues. They're electrifying, but they have now an issue with the load. The electrical load is so high that they can't meet the load because they've electrified to their maximum. They now have issues with not being able to get extra transmission investments to increase their electrical load.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Your study is interesting in terms of what the foundation is. It's basically trying to reduce emissions and address affordability, which is always the balance. In your study, did you have a cross-section of different types of houses in terms of their age, of when they were built?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
Yes, we did. We knew the year of construction of all the homes from the assessed value. I don't have it in front of me, but I think the average house was built in 1980, so we had some older houses and some newer houses.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
In Kitimat, an industrial town, some of those houses were built in the 1950s, so they're having the same issues you were just talking about.
Your study talked about the retrofit strategy that was put in place. It found that it reduced natural gas consumption in comprehensive envelope retrofits, but realized energy savings were only about 60% of the savings predicted beforehand. Did those savings correlate in any way to the emissions?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
We did not have emissions data in our study. That's not to say that I don't recommend linking emissions data, but it's actually quite complex to get an emissions picture, in the sense that you have to then look at marginal emission factors and not just at averages to get an accurate measure of how much emissions actually fell. Almost mechanically, though, one thing I can say is that if you're saving less than predicted, then of course the emissions savings will be less than predicted.
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm looking at the data here and looking at your comments, and it almost sounds like in a staged approach, especially in colder regions, it is better to have a really well-insulated home first before you think about energy retrofits, or is it kind of parallel?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
I think that's a great question. It's an empirical question, and we'd have to conduct a study to determine that. At this point, we don't have enough data to say that for certain. Now, of course, there are model predictions, once again. There will be models that make assumptions about the air leakage of a home and the thermostat set point that people are using, but they're going to be assumptions that in many cases will not be true for most households.
My answer is kind of a non-answer at this point. We don't really yet know. I will say that given we found that several of the insulation retrofits did not deliver—so statistically zero, for example, for basement insulation—a lot of folks are given the advice that they should insulate their home and get a heat pump—
Conservative
Ellis Ross Conservative Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I have 30 seconds. Can I ask one question in relation to that? The insulation we used in our region was hard foam for the basement. Does it make a difference if you're using the kind of insulation that sticks to it, urethane?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
We do not know what type of insulation was used. We know what our value was brought to, but we don't know the type.
Just to quickly finish, I would say that getting a heat pump at this point is clearly a good idea, rather than waiting on the evidence of whether or not you need to insulate before you get your heat pump.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shannon Miedema
Thank you very much.
Mr. Watchorn, you have the floor for five minutes.
Liberal
Tim Watchorn Liberal Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Papineau, thank you for joining us. Your comments are quite helpful. I would like to explore this issue a bit further.
You said that replacing a house's doors and windows didn't achieve the desired results. People tend to think that a house's openings are the deciding factor.
How did you determine that this wasn't as effective as previously thought?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
It was an econometric approach. Our data showed a regression. I don't have the data in front of me. However, it concerned about a hundred people who decided to replace their doors or windows or both.
Our study isn't the only one to show that the returns were lower than predicted. I can actually tell you about another study that we carried out. We reviewed 39 papers in the literature that also examined investments in new doors and windows. The result was the same in multiple cases. These investments didn't lead to any reduction in energy consumption.
As I said earlier in my response to Mr. Bonin, we didn't carry out any randomized controlled trials beforehand. So we couldn't really know whether receiving money to replace their doors or windows influenced people's decision to carry out these renovations. They might have carried out the renovations even if there hadn't been any air leakages. We can't determine this without having established an evaluation system beforehand or offered the investments to households at random.
Liberal
Tim Watchorn Liberal Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC
That's good to know.
I'll back up what you said. At home, we had only baseboard heaters. However, two years ago, I added a heat pump. Just by doing this, we reduced our electricity usage by 40%.
Before being elected to the federal government, I was a mayor. In my constituency, one mayor is quite proactive when it comes to renovations. He tried to get a bylaw passed to ban gas heating systems. His name is Paul Germain. He was determined that only heat pumps be installed in new houses. He ran into a roadblock in the form of Énergir, a gas company in Quebec. The company sued the City of Prévost to force it to change its bylaw, arguing that the measure was unfair. They ultimately reached an amicable agreement.
How can cities or provinces that want to take a proactive approach to energy efficiency work with the government to achieve the best results for Canadians?
Associate Professor of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
Good question.
We need a market transformation policy. The federal government should implement a regulation similar to the one that this mayor tried to implement in his city. This would prevent people from buying furnaces and water heaters. However, I don't think that we're there yet. We're in Parliament. We must take voters into account. Ultimately, if we could show the benefits of energy efficiency and price stability, I think that it would be a good idea to implement a market transformation policy at some point.
Liberal
Tim Watchorn Liberal Les Pays-d'en-Haut, QC
I also have the flaw of being an engineer. You said that you looked at some models that were more advanced than the ones originally used. What has changed in the models? What other criteria were incorporated into these models to make them more realistic?