Environment Committee on Oct. 6th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

I call this meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everybody. This is meeting number 48 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. We're continuing today with our study of retrofits for home energy efficiency.

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

Before we begin, members, the analysts are currently working on the report for the study on carbon pricing and are seeking recommendations by members before October 16. Please note that if you have recommendations that you would like considered by the analysts for the carbon pricing report, you need to submit those by end of day Friday.

For the first hour, we have two witnesses with us. Unfortunately, the third witness didn't receive the headset in time.

From The Atmospheric Fund, we have Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs, joining us virtually. From The ReCover Initiative, we have Lorrie Rand, senior adviser, joining us virtually as well.

You have five minutes for your opening statements. We do have a time card to let you know when you're at one minute and when you're out of time.

We will begin with you, Mr. Purcell. The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Bryan Purcell, Vice-President, Policy and Programs, The Atmospheric Fund]

Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Bryan Purcell. I'm the vice-president of policy and programs at The Atmospheric Fund, a regional climate agency serving the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

Advancing home energy retrofits is core to our work, because housing is a major source of carbon emissions, but retrofits are about much more than carbon reduction. They improve affordability, strengthen communities and support a more resilient and prosperous Canada. Home energy retrofits are like the Swiss army knife of climate action. They lower energy bills for families, improve housing quality and resilience, create local jobs that can't be offshored, and strengthen energy security by reducing reliance on natural gas imported from the U.S.

I have worked with affordable housing providers on energy retrofits for nearly 20 years. I learned quickly that an energy retrofit is never just about energy. It's about better homes and a better quality of life for real people. I remember one resident in one of the buildings we retrofitted reduced to tears as she conveyed her relief at finally feeling safe arriving home after her late-night shifts thanks to a lighting retrofit in the parking garage. I remember a mother whose child suffered severe asthma attacks triggered by second-hand smoke that entered their apartment from neighbouring units. After retrofitting the ventilation system, she told us how much less frequently those attacks were occurring. Energy-efficient, low-carbon homes are simply better places for people.

The powering Canada strong strategy set a target of retrofitting one million homes. We strongly support that ambition. However, achieving it over the next three years will require renewed investment and immediate action. I have three recommendations today, all focused on renewing programs that are expiring or have recently expired. These programs are proven, have established delivery systems and can be brought to market quickly. Federal officials already know how to administer them and how to improve them based on recent experience over the past number of years.

First, I recommend recapitalizing the deep retrofit accelerator initiative. Through this successful program, 13 organizations, including my own, have been supporting multiresidential housing retrofits across Canada, including dedicated programming for indigenous and northern communities. The program helps housing providers plan, finance and implement deep retrofits. It has engaged more than 1,700 building owners and supported retrofits in over 10,000 low-income housing units, with thousands more in development. The program's working well, but it expires in March. Without renewal, many projects risk being stranded.

Second, recapitalize the Canada greener affordable housing program, or CGAH. CGAH provides forgivable and repayable finance for large-scale affordable housing providers to retrofit their buildings. It is a perfect complement to the deep retrofit accelerator initiative. DRAI helps develop investment-ready projects and CGAH provides the capital needed to implement them. Despite its high performance standards, the program was quickly oversubscribed, but there remains a substantial pipeline of shovel-ready projects that could proceed if funding were renewed.

Third, recapitalize and extend the Canada greener homes programs for single-family housing. The grant and loan programs helped more than 500,000 Canadian households undertake home energy retrofits. Demand exceeded available funding. The program could be relaunched quickly, with improvements based on many lessons learned in the first phase, immediately getting the sector back to work retrofitting Canadian homes.

Canada is in a pivotal moment. Building Canada strong requires investments that can create jobs, improve affordability, strengthen energy security and get shovels in the ground quickly. Home energy retrofits do all of those things while also reducing emissions, improving housing quality and reducing reliance on U.S. energy imports. The fastest path to revitalize the sector is recapitalizing successful residential retrofit programs that have proven track records, existing delivery capacity and a pipeline of projects ready to move ahead.

That covers the main points I wanted to make today. I would be more than happy to take any questions any of you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you very much, Mr. Purcell.

We will now turn to Ms. Lorrie Rand of the ReCover Initiative.

The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Lorrie Rand, Senior Advisor, The ReCover Initiative]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for inviting me to speak today. I am the director of sustainability at Habit Studio, as well as senior adviser with the ReCover Initiative, which is Atlantic Canada's deep retrofit accelerator funded by NRCan.

I recently co-authored ReCover's “Atlantic Canada Deep Retrofit Roadmap”, which modelled technical and economic pathways for retrofits to prevalent housing types in the Atlantic provinces. My responses to the questions of this committee will be informed by that research and by direct experience in working with homeowners to make their homes more energy-efficient and resilient and less expensive to operate.

There's no question that home energy retrofits and adaptation measures represent a meaningful opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy affordability. Energy savings of 50% to 80% and substantial greenhouse gas savings are technically viable, as found in our research. Retrofits increase energy affordability, but they don't always deliver overall cost savings. That's something we think is important to note. ReCover studied this using an economic model called the total cost of building ownership, or TCBO for short, which accounts for construction costs, financing, maintenance and energy bills projected over 60 years.

A significant driver of the TCBO is maintenance capital, meaning the end-of-life replacement of large items like roofs or HVAC equipment. We found that this can cost more than the energy of the building over the life of the building. Our modelling looked at construction in a range of costs between $1,000 and $5,000 per square metre. There is a good business case at $1,000 per square metre, but in the market we are seeing in Atlantic Canada, the costs are more in the $3,000 per square metre range.

Those results were sobering, but the answer is not to not support retrofits. Retrofits make homes more resilient to extreme weather. A well-insulated, airtight home stays habitable for much longer during a power outage, allowing occupants to safely shelter in place. Resiliency investment is critical in Atlantic Canada. Hurricane Fiona left about 80% of Nova Scotia and 95% of P.E.I. without power, with some locations experiencing prolonged outages of several weeks.

Also, a key finding of our research is that retrofit costs are not borne equally across beneficiaries. We call this the retrofit value gap. What this means is that homeowners pay for the retrofits, but a significant portion of the benefits are non-energy benefits that are societal, reducing burdens on health care and public safety, improving grid capacity and more. Managing that gap is important if we're going to accelerate retrofits.

Retrofit support does exist, but low-income households, renters, rural households and equity-deserving homes are being unevenly reached and not reached on the scale needed. The Canada greener homes affordability program is expected to reach about 1,600 households in Nova Scotia, for example, but Efficiency Canada estimates that over 113,000 Nova Scotian households are experiencing energy poverty.

The delivery system is also a barrier. We are facing a labour shortfall of about 12,600 construction workers by 2034. Experience in high-performance construction techniques is growing but uneven, and owners in rural and remote areas are being underserved. Owners receive inconsistent recommendations in pricing. Some owners have access to supports that are emerging, such as navigator programs, and we see that they're moving forward with more confidence. Most need to rely on their savings or credit from traditional banks to fund retrofits. There are emerging PACE programs, but the uptake is very mixed.

The flip side of this is economic opportunity, with residential retrofits alone modelled to reach $8 billion a year through to 2050 if the region can support it. Addressing the workforce barrier is critical to us unlocking this.

I would echo each of Bryan's suggestions to recapitalize the existing federal programs.

I have four other high-level recommendations that can be expanded on: multi-year predictable retrofit funding; building data that's treated as public infrastructure; clear conditions on all building programs for new and retrofit, meaning not just vaguely suggesting energy efficiency but tiers; and counting all retrofit benefits when measuring the value of a program.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

We will now go to questions from members.

We will start with Mr. Ross for six minutes.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for their testimony.

I have a bit of history with composite materials for housing, as an MLA in B.C., specifically for first nations.

I'd like to start with the specific cost for a retrofit of a house built in the 1950s or 1960s. Is the cost a bit more than it is for a house built in the 1980s or 1990s?

That's for any one of you, if you think you have the answer, please.

[Lorrie Rand]

Your question is very difficult because it's a bit like asking how long a piece of string is. The housing stock has.... Many of our properties have received interim retrofits. The cost of a retrofit depends on the measures that have been implemented and the maintenance backlog that a home has, such as if the owners have been able to keep up with required maintenance.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm getting at the structure itself in terms of the building code. It was a lot different back in the 1950s.

[Lorrie Rand]

Yes.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Kitimat is an industrial town. It was actually built by the industry, the aluminum smelter. A lot of those houses are still lived in and sold today. Would those houses have a higher cost compared to an up-to-date house?

[Lorrie Rand]

Not necessarily.

Over the years, the structural elements that go into houses have changed with the codes. What we saw in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s were houses built with true two-by-fours, whereas the houses built in the 1980s and 1990s were nominal lumber, so they would be one and a half by three and a half instead of a true two-by-four. The older the wood, the stronger the wood. We're using cheaper lumber. The newer era is not necessarily less expensive to work on. I think that's maybe what you're getting at.

From an archetypal perspective—

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Can I interrupt you?

[Lorrie Rand]

Yes.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for that answer. I know the question came out of left field.

In terms of the composite materials themselves, where is the supply chain coming from to put these materials together? Is it coming from within the borders of Canada? I'm talking about the polyethylene, for example. Is that being imported from someplace else?

[Lorrie Rand]

It depends. Some of it's made here. We have American products and we have Chinese products coming in, things like drywall and OSB. A lot of larger production builders will bring it in from China if there are big savings. They still have to meet certain standards. There's a wide disparity from coast to coast as well. B.C. is likely receiving materials from quite a different pool than from where we would be sourcing things here in Atlantic Canada. Actually, in our high-performance projects in Atlantic Canada, we source from Europe regularly because we can get things via shipping can from manufacturers in Europe that are producing very high-performance products.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for the answers. I know these are not really your area, but our other witness didn't show up today, so I'm just trying to throw it out there, hoping the Swiss army knife reference actually can come up here.

When we are talking about the content of these composite materials, there's a certain level of recycled content that goes into these. I don't expect you to know the answer, but when we're talking about recycled content, are we talking about plastics?

That's for anybody.

I know this is not your area. I get that. I'll probably send these questions anyway and get a written response.

[Bryan Purcell]

I'm not sure about plastics specifically and how many of them are recycled into the feedstock for new materials used in retrofits. Certainly, in other kinds of insulation, we see recycled paper products, newsprint boxes and cardboard being used for very environmentally friendly insulation that can be used in walls and attics as well.

There are definitely opportunities to use recycled products in retrofits, but it's not my area of expertise. I'm not sure if Lorrie could add more detail.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I understand that. It's a simple fact that polyethylene is being used and there is recycled content. We have a plastic problem not only in Canada but globally.

We don't have a very robust recycling program here in Canada, but it would be nice to know if there's a way to get recycled plastics into building materials. I'm okay if you guys don't know the answer.

[Lorrie Rand]

I don't know the answer to that one.

One thing I would say, particularly on the polyethylene side of things, is that as we move to more high-performance building products, we're moving away from that sort of sheet polyethylene and into more—I couldn't tell you what they're made of—different products.

I see Shannon's sign.

Shannon, your sign is so small on my screen, but it's yellow, so I'll stop talking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Ms. Rand.

Mr. Ross, we are going to reschedule the witness who wasn't able to testify today because his headset didn't arrive on time, so we will get you your answers.

We'll now go to Mr. Greaves for six minutes, please.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon, colleagues.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here.

I'd like to start with you, Mr. Purcell.

Thank you very much for your presentation and also for the Atmospheric Fund's work in helping to reduce emissions in Canada's largest metropolitan area. We know what a critically important role the GTHA plays in our overall national emissions landscape and how important it is to drive down emissions there.

I think there are good lessons to be learned for smaller urban areas across the country as well, including my own riding of Victoria. Approximately half of the folks in my riding live in multi-unit dwellings or apartment buildings.

Could you expand a little bit, please, really at the core, on what role the federal government can play in helping to incentivize or encourage the owners of multi-unit dwellings, multi-unit buildings, to actually undertake these energy retrofits?

[Bryan Purcell]

You've raised a really important point. Nationally, I think about a third of Canadians are living in multiresidential housing. It often doesn't get the attention it needs when it comes to energy efficiency programming. It's a great opportunity to have efficiencies of scale. You can retrofit many, sometimes hundreds, of homes at once through a single project, so there are efficiencies to be gained there.

These buildings definitely need support for retrofits. The form of support varies a bit depending on whether you're talking about market housing, such as rental apartments, condominiums and strata corporations, or about affordable housing providers.

When it comes to affordable housing providers, whether municipal, provincial or non-profit, significant subsidies or forgivable loans are really helpful, because these providers across the country are really struggling with a very old, on average, housing stock that needs significant renewal. There's huge overlap between the renewal they need just to maintain habitability and the energy efficiency gains that we can make. They're almost completely overlapping. They have a huge backlog of maintenance and renewal needs across their stock. That funding, through programs such as the Canada greener affordable housing program, has been critical to moving those projects forward. We've had great success using those programs with our affordable housing providers.

On the rental side, different kinds of programs are needed. Low-interest financing has been made available through the Canada Infrastructure Bank. One of the core challenges is that they don't currently have a mandate to achieve these energy and carbon goals. They have very high expectations on the internal rate of return they would want to achieve through investments they make. Targeted incentives are really helpful for that sector, but they don't need to be covering such a huge share of the costs as we see with the affordable housing providers.

Condominiums and strata corporations shouldn't be forgotten. They're a huge segment of the housing market. They face unique constraints often in legislation about how they can use the money they raise for maintenance and renewal, limiting how much they can put on that towards energy efficiency upgrades. Similar to private rental housing, they need more targeted incentive programs that help to make that business case viable and attractive for condominiums and strata corps. The federal government can play a key role there as well.

In addition, all three of those housing types really benefit from the kind of support that retrofit accelerators are providing through the deep retrofit accelerator initiative. Retrofits in large buildings are complex. Often there's not a lot of extra capacity within the building management to plan and execute these projects. Having a team of professionals on hand, such as we and other accelerators are providing, really helps make these projects deliverable and deliverable with excellence, especially because in almost all cases we want to retrofit multiresidential housing while keeping residents in place. We don't want to move them out for a year to retrofit the building. It's very disruptive. That creates extra complexity. The support that we and the other federally funded accelerators can provide is essential to preserving occupancy through the retrofit process.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Let me jump in on that point, Mr. Purcell. Thank you. It's exactly where I was going with my next question.

One of the challenges, obviously, of our current high cost of housing in many parts of the country is the risk that incentivizing energy retrofits or other kinds of programs will result in downloading of costs onto tenants of rental buildings or, as you've alluded to, in some cases will result in the displacement of tenants themselves.

Can you speak to how retrofit policies can be best designed to avoid either outcome: increasing costs for renters or displacement by way of renoviction?

[Bryan Purcell]

That's a really important point in the private rental sector.

In many markets across Canada, it would be standard operating practice when major capital investments are made to pass that through to tenants. In some cases, that requires applying for special increases where provinces have rent control legislation, such as in Ontario. The provincial frameworks will usually grant those anytime the building owner makes an investment. It happens a lot that these costs can be passed down to tenants.

The best way for a federal funding program, for example, to mitigate that is to just make that an explicit condition of the funding. If you take this funding that we're offering for the retrofit, you can't be applying for extra increases in rent on the basis of this project. That does require carefully calibrating the amount of funding on offer so it's attractive enough for them to still participate.

We had some challenges. For example, CMHC's coinvestment fund had a retrofit stream, but we had very limited private sector participation while it was available. They did have strong affordability requirements there, not only to not increase rent but to actually reduce rent, make the building accessible and achieve the energy and carbon goals. It was theoretically really great, but the amount of funding on offer was just not sufficient; therefore, private rental landlords didn't participate.

Once we decide on the goals for a program, we really have to calibrate the level of funding to make it make sense for the business community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. Purcell. That was excellent.

Our time is up, Mr. Greaves.

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