Environment Committee on Oct. 6th, 2026

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining us.

Mr. Purcell, do you believe the measures the government is adopting to decarbonize buildings are sufficient to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets in this sector?

[Bryan Purcell]

I would say that presently with the current programs available, while there are some good programs available, they're not sufficient to get us on track for our carbon reduction targets for the housing sector. We need to step up the level of ambition and support. Importantly, over the last two years, numerous programs have come to an end as their funding expired, and they haven't been renewed as of yet, many of them. Others are about to come to an end imminently, and we're waiting to hear whether they will be renewed.

I would say there have been some good programs, but we really need to move towards making longer-term and larger commitments to these programs, not only to get on track for our carbon goals but also to enable the retrofit sector and the businesses that operate within it to plan for scaling over time, growing their operations and becoming more efficient. They need to have confidence in future demand rather than stop-and-start programs every few years, which is very disruptive for companies that are trying to meet this demand for retrofits.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

You are talking about program renewal. Some have not been renewed, and others are at risk of not being renewed.

Can you provide us with the list of existing programs that you think should be renewed or enhanced by the government so we can have the complete list, which seems quite extensive to me?

[Bryan Purcell]

I mentioned a few earlier. The Canada greener homes grant and loan programs expired, and it would be quite helpful if they were renewed. There are some improvements that could be made, but the main thing would be to renew them and provide a long runway to help market growth.

On the multiresidential front, the Canada greener affordable housing program, which serves large-scale affordable housing providers, ran out of capital funds just this year, so renewing that would be extremely helpful. That goes to subsidized housing providers, whether municipal, not-for-profit or provincial. It's really desperately needed, that funding, to move that sector forward.

Then I mentioned as well the deep retrofit accelerator initiative to do that market development supporting the end users, accessing the available funding programs and navigating contractors. That has been really helpful. That's the DRAI program.

We'd love to also see something for market multiresidential housing. We had something called the CMHC coinvestment fund that supported retrofits. As I briefly mentioned, there was very low uptake in the retrofit of rental housing because they didn't find the offer generous enough to offset the affordability and accessibility requirements that went along with the program. The program concept was good, but you need, if it was renewed, to calibrate the level of funding to the ambition that we want to set on affordability and accessibility so that it makes business sense to building owners to participate.

Those would be the key programs that I'd like to see renewed that have run out of funding.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

In your pre-budget submission, you talk about the deep retrofit accelerator initiative. Can you submit your pre-budget submission or an outline of your submission to the committee in writing, please?

[Bryan Purcell]

I'd be happy to send that to the clerk, yes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

Have any analyses been done or have you done an analysis to determine where Canada stands when it comes to decarbonizing buildings compared to the most ambitious countries and governments? I'm talking about innovative objectives and programs, whether for the less fortunate, low-income households or the middle class. That would give us an idea where Canada stands.

Is Canada doing well? Should it do more? Are there other countries or governments that are more inspiring?

[Bryan Purcell]

I would have to look into specific published reports that benchmark Canada against other countries. I would say, based on my professional opinion and keeping up with what other countries are doing, there are other countries that are ahead of Canada. There are also others that are in a similar position or behind Canada. I wouldn't put us at the back of the pack, but there are certainly countries that have made a lot more progress on retrofitting and renewing housing stock.

We've seen, for example, in Scandinavia, some very ambitious programs on deep retrofits that have rolled across significant parts of the housing stock. We've seen significant movement in the U.K. and in France. I think there are a number of countries that are moving faster on retrofitting housing than Canada is, but I couldn't rank us specifically as of this moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

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

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll start with Ms. Rand.

My understanding is the ReCover Initiative has received about $16.5 million through the federal deep retrofit accelerator initiative and about another $1 million through the greener neighbourhoods pilot program. How many buildings have actually completed physical retrofits as a result of that funding?

[Lorrie Rand]

To date, no buildings have received complete retrofits. We split the monies that we've received across three large buckets. One bucket is research and development. The second bucket is in capacity building, essentially working with workforce, industry and equity-deserving communities on understanding and supporting them through barriers in early stage retrofit projects. Finally, the rest of our work has been working with building owners in planning deep retrofits.

Initially, we have worked with property owners on feasibility studies. These projects take a very long time to frame up, so I believe only three have moved from the feasibility into the next stage, which is design and construction documents.

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

I noticed your research says that energy savings of up to 75% are technically possible. I assume, because there's been zero done, that's entirely based on modelling. That's not based on any actual evidence of an energy bill before and after.

[Lorrie Rand]

It is based on modelling, and the modelling was not completed in-house. We engaged two firms that had extensive experience working with Efficiency Nova Scotia and delivering their programs, so the scenarios modelled were taken from plausible scenarios that we're seeing in Efficiency Nova Scotia.

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

You had also mentioned earlier in your opening remarks what I believe you called sobering results from a study. Could you expand on what those key findings were in terms of the value proposition when considering actual cost savings?

[Lorrie Rand]

What we are finding is that at the cost of retrofits today, given we have seen across the country a pretty dramatic escalation in construction costs even before the pandemic, but it really skyrocketed during the pandemic, the projects that would have seen a business case in terms of the energy savings that would make the retrofit attractive to a property owner five years ago are not able to see those savings now because the capital costs are so high.

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

We heard testimony like that prior. How should we judge whether money going to organizations to plan and allegedly accelerate retrofits is producing better value than actually putting money towards insulation, heat pumps or upgrades in people's homes? You guys have received at least $17 million that I'm aware of and have yet to produce any retrofits. How do we judge that as a good investment for taxpayers?

[Lorrie Rand]

We actually think you should be paying for things like insulation, air sealing and better windows. However, the people we work with in the project we're working on would not be contemplating this work without the supports that are on offer. In many cases, some of these projects are in African Nova Scotian and equity-deserving communities. We've done 15 feasibility studies, and five of them are scheduled to move forward to actual implementation with an indigenous community, so they are moving forward, but these are groups that wouldn't move them forward otherwise.

As we're doing this, we're collecting invaluable information about the considerable barriers that are impeding people from doing retrofits. We're also bringing people into the retrofit workforce. We piloted and have now launched a program that is a job shadowing and introduction for African Nova Scotian youth to work on deep retrofits, both in construction and in engineering offices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much.

We will now turn to Mr. Grant for five minutes, please.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Madam Rand, in your introduction, you were concise. There were four recommendations at the end, and I know you wanted to go a little deeper into what those were. Unfortunately, my computer is not working today, so I wasn't able to write them down. Could you repeat those and go a bit deeper into what you were recommending?

[Lorrie Rand]

My first recommendation was for multi-year predictable retrofit funding either for supports or actual capital costs. This is needed. Bryan mentioned this. Industry, manufacturers and the entire building ecosystem need to see signalling that retrofits are going to be supported. We need retrofits to achieve our climate goals. Buildings represent 20% or more, depending on where you are, of greenhouse gas emissions. The business case is not fully there for owners. Public investment is warranted for health, safety, resilience and all the other non-energy benefits.

We want building data to be treated like public infrastructure. What I mean by that is this: Every single organization like mine begins every effort of supporting retrofits by, essentially, gathering a bunch of data, but we're gathering the same data over and over again. The federal government has a lot of this data in various places. It's just a lot of work to get it. Establishing some kind of pragmatic way of sharing that data.... It can certainly be anonymized, but it's very important to organizations and industry.

I recommend clear conditions on building programs. As an example, I wrote a letter to Ms. Miedema about this earlier this spring. We have programs wherein the federal government is investing considerable money in new housing infrastructure, vaguely saying that these houses will be energy efficient. I would like it to have a very clear target on any programs that it's launching for new...or retrofitting. This sends the right signal to industry: We care about energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of new buildings, it means not building buildings today that are going to need a retrofit in 30 years, which is absolutely happening right now.

Lastly, I recommend that we count all retrofit benefits when we're measuring the value of a program. We need more understanding of the financial value of non-energy benefits. There are considerable health savings among populations that are not living in mouldy buildings, for example. That's an issue which is very dominant here in Atlantic Canada, where chronic lung conditions are high in number. We have really moist and mouldy buildings. I recommend the valuation of resilience benefits and the benefits to public security in terms of keeping people off the streets if they have to leave their homes in a bad storm. The cheapest form of improving our grid capacity is still deep retrofitting. It's a very unexciting issue or opportunity.

I think the biggest non-energy benefit.... I mean, it's an energy benefit, but not for the homeowner. If we conserve energy by doing deep retrofits, we can have a very significant impact on reducing grid strain and improving our electrical capacity. All these things need to be quantified and measured when we're considering the value of a program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you.

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

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Before I ask my questions, I would like to talk about a motion—my colleagues are aware—that I moved last May asking that the committee study carbon capture, storage and sequestration.

Since everyone agrees, even though my Liberal colleagues may have some reservations, it is important to adopt this motion, because, this summer, the Government of Alberta and the Canadian government announced a memorandum of understanding with the five largest oil sands producers. They want to implement what they see as potentially the largest carbon capture and sequestration project. This project would probably require an investment of $10 billion of public funds from the federal government, and we're talking about a technology that hasn't necessarily been proven effective. That could be very expensive.

I think my colleagues agree that we should review this project or, at least, the idea of carbon sequestration and capture. I don't know if you want me to read the motion moved on May 25 so it can be quickly adopted. It has been moved, but I don't know if my colleagues have the text. If not, I can read it quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. Bonin.

Mr. Malette.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Yes.

We're going to debate this motion.

You're bringing it forward now for a vote.

Does everybody have the notice of motion that Mr. Bonin put in place on May 25?

We'll take a brief moment to distribute the motion.