Evidence of meeting #8 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 climate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor, As an Individual
I don't know. Again, I'd need you to be more specific.
If I did, my name would be on it.
Liberal
Eric St-Pierre Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
It's this specific declaration with your name on it. The declaration says, “We deny that carbon dioxide...is a pollutant.”
Do you still deny that CO2, or carbon dioxide, is a pollutant?
Professor, As an Individual
I deny that it's an air pollutant in the same category as carbon monoxide or sulphur dioxide. It's not regulated. It's not listed as a pollutant in that framework.
Liberal
Liberal
Eric St-Pierre Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
You're a senior fellow.
Is it true that the Koch Institute funded the Fraser Institute in the past?
Professor, As an Individual
You would have to ask the institute. I don't know. I'm not privy to that information.
Liberal
Professor, As an Individual
Again, you'd have to ask the institute. I'm not privy to that information.
My salary is paid by the University of Guelph. I'm not a salaried employee there. Again, you can find out from the institute where its funding comes from.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Angelo Iacono
Thank you, Mr. St-Pierre.
Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for six minutes.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. McKitrick, I'll stay with that line of questioning. Could you provide the committee with a document showing the sources of the Fraser Institute's funding?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Angelo Iacono
Just a moment, Mr. McKitrick.
Mr. Bonin, when asking for documents, you have to go through the chair. That way, the clerk can take note of the requested documents and make sure that they are received in a timely manner. If you ask the witnesses directly, we have no control and risk not receiving the documents on time.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Mr. Chair, could you ask that the committee be provided with the sources of funding received by the Fraser Institute? Thank you.
Mr. McKitrick, do you know whether the Fraser Institute is receiving money from oil or gas companies?
Professor, As an Individual
I'm not involved in fundraising or budgeting. You'd have to ask the institute.
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
I will note that you don't know. Thank you.
Mr. Haley, I'd like to go back to the loans for green retrofits. The loans are no longer available for the middle class, for example. Do you see that as a setback in the fight against climate change?
Senior Director of Policy Strategy, Efficiency Canada
Yes, I think it's important that everybody can access energy efficiency services when they need them. That means solutions if you're middle income or low income.
Right now, there's essentially no solution available from the federal government if you're middle income. It's a bit of a mystery to me, because it was a loan. Most of the money was paid back, and the fiscal cost was quite low. This kind of asset on the government books seems to be exactly the type of program that this federal government says it likes. It's something that can be declared as an asset on the books, and you do pay a small interest rate subsidy. It was a mystery to see it go away.
The government right now is saying, “Well, it met its objectives.” I don't understand what the objective was with that loan program, because all of the buildings were not retrofitted. We haven't hit net zero on the building sector. There's still a demand for the program. We haven't transformed the market and created new business models. It seems that the objective was to spend the money and then it was gone.
That's why one of the recommendations to the committee is to have some goals associated with energy productivity but also some goals associated with energy poverty, so that this low-income program that now exists doesn't just go away when the money runs out and there's actually an objective associated with it.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
You agree that it's a setback in the fight against climate change.
Senior Director of Policy Strategy, Efficiency Canada
Absolutely. Getting rid of the greener homes loan program is not consistent with meeting net-zero emissions. It also isn't consistent with the promises made in the last Liberal platform and what Mark Carney wrote about in his book Values, which actually identified home energy retrofits as a strategic and high-productivity area for government investment.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
I'd like to go back to Build Canada Homes and its work. Do you think the agency should impose conditions for new buildings to ensure that they meet high environmental and energy efficiency standards?
Senior Director of Policy Strategy, Efficiency Canada
There is no clear statement, that I've seen, that as the government supports new homes, there will be some sort of energy efficiency standard associated with that. There is one thing the federal government could do. There is a national model building code that the provinces adopt. There's essentially a series of levels or tiers in that building code. The federal government could say that Build Canada Homes will follow a schedule of energy performance moving up those tiers at exactly the same kind of schedule we would like to see the provinces do. That would be a really productive way to make sure that those buildings are essentially built right the first time so that they have low operational costs.
It would also, I would argue, be a way to accelerate the modernization of the construction industry. Things like prefabrication and modular homes are also very good at hitting such high energy efficiency performance targets as airtightness.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you.
Do you think a sector-based target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in buildings would help Canada meet its overall greenhouse reduction target?
Senior Director of Policy Strategy, Efficiency Canada
Yes. I also think targets should be based on exactly what we want. One thing that hopefully we can all decide we want is to eliminate energy poverty in this country. Nobody should be poor because of a high energy bill or because they can't access services like air conditioning. I would really encourage targets like that. They can mobilize the public as well.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Angelo Iacono
Thank you.
The floor will now go to the Conservatives.
Mr. Leslie, the floor is yours for five minutes.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. McKitrick, the Liberals over the last decade have rolled out a laundry list of environmental schemes but, as you mentioned in your opening remarks, never have they told Canadians what any of it will actually cost—not to families, not to businesses, not to workers and certainly not to the overall economy.
As a professor of economics holding a Ph.D., I'm hoping you can help fill in some of the blanks on some of these specific policies. I'd like to start with the emissions cap. The government claims that it will not hurt Canadian energy producers. What do you think it will do to our economy?