Government Operations Committee on Feb. 27th, 2007

[Margaret Kenny]

The standard that we have for our buildings, being new buildings, being LEED Gold, has been in place just since the spring of 2005. We have 17 buildings in the federal government that we believe we can get certification for.

There has been a lot of work done in buildings, but in terms of meeting an actual standard like that, we have not gone through a process to certify them per se. But certainly in Public Works, when we unroll this BOMA Go Green Plus standard, we will be evaluating all of our buildings to see how they rate in terms of environmental performance. That is going to give us a very good base that we can work from, and some information that's benchmarked against industry.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Then, 17 have a green certification.

Have any federal funds been allocated to your office to ensure that these buildings are upgraded in order to comply with those criteria or are you just being told to do your best without any funds being provided?

[Margaret Kenny]

There are a couple of ways in which the buildings are upgraded. One is through the program that my colleague from Natural Resources described, the federal buildings initiative, where the company would come in and do the work and that work would be paid for through the savings.

For the other, in a department like Public Works, money is set aside—approximately $20 million this year—to specifically undertake these green initiatives. But at the same time, we do work.... For example, there's a building here in Ottawa that we are fitting up for tenants. We are making use of the cabinetry, the furniture, and everything that is still there. We're refurbishing it, which in itself is a green activity to undertake, but it doesn't really get captured in the dollar figures that we've put in the ledger. There are HVAC systems being upgraded all the time, etc., to improve their efficiency. These also contribute to the greening of the building.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

With respect to vehicles, can you tell us what the current situation is with respect to the consumption of petroleum-based fuels as opposed to greener fuels?

[Margaret Kenny]

Shirley, I think you have the data on that. Could you share it with the group?

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

For example, is ethanol being used?

[Margaret Kenny]

Yes.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

The other day, when we were at CPAC, I listened at the door and I heard Mr. Kramp state that Mexican corn producers sell a lot of corn to the United States, which means that corn-based food in Mexico is three times more expensive now. We know that ethanol is a big polluter. We also know that a lot of land, a lot of space is required to produce ethanol, and this is not consistent with an environmental plan.

Are you phasing out the use of petroleum-based fuel in order to replace it by something else, without necessarily moving in to a green era, or are you simply copying in order to cover certain angles?

[Margaret Kenny]

I'll just say at the outset that this is always an issue when you're looking at any kind of technology. There are pros and cons to it.

We have been looking at alternative fuels. We do use ethanol. As a matter of fact, there's an increase in the use of ethanol, and there are certain advantages in terms of reducing pollutants from ethanol. At the same time, there is an increase in the use of hybrid vehicles, using another kind of technology. So there is more than one technology that we're using.

Do you have the figures?

[Shirley Jen]

Yes.

Mr. Nadeau, in 1995, Parliament passed the Alternative Fuels Act, the goal of which was to require that 75 vehicles purchased by the government be able to run on alternative fuels.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

You mean 75%?

[Shirley Jen]

Yes, 75%, but on condition that it be efficient and feasible.

With your permission, I will continue in English.

Presently the number of vehicles in the federal fleet, as you heard before, is

approximately 27,000 vehicles.

Of the 27,000 vehicles, we have roughly 2,000, or 7%, operating on ethanol--that's E85 ethanol--and about 200, or 1%, on propane or natural gas. As well, we have another 2%, or 600 vehicles, that are hybrid vehicles. Those are not technically vehicles that are running on alternative fuels, but the end result is the same: you're trying to invest in vehicles that operate on non-petroleum-based fuels and that therefore emit fewer pollutants.

Totally, then, that's roughly 10% of the federal fleet.

Actually, we have some statistics on this. Since 1997, when you look at the total number of vehicles purchased by the federal government in any one year and the number that were deemed operationally feasible and cost-effective to purchase because they ran on alternative fuel, in every single year since we've tracked this--1997-98 up to 2005-06--we have met or exceeded the target.

You may do the math and ask, why is she telling us we've exceeded our target of 75%, when 75% of 27,000 is...? She only said 10%; it's not 75%. The reason is that if you look at any given year.... Let's give an example.

In 2004-05 the federal government, grosso modo, purchased 3,700 vehicles. The total number of vehicles in that year estimated to meet the test of being cost-effective and operationally feasible was 34 vehicles. If you look at 75% of those 34 vehicles, it meant that we had to purchase 26 vehicles that ran on alternative fuels. In actual fact, that year we didn't buy just 26 vehicles that ran on alternative fuels; we bought 394.

That gives you a bit of a sense for setting targets, which I think some of you have mentioned, in terms of improving performance on something very tangible. Then we are actually measuring the results and trying to trend it. I think it illustrates that when people see these types of data, it actually is quite interesting, because I think it's actually generating a certain groundswell, and people are more enthusiastic about it.

In fact, my colleague provided one statistic to me just before coming here that I thought was quite significant. It relates to the executive fleet, which is basically the fleet provided to ministers and deputies and equivalents. It's roughly 85 vehicles. Over the last 16 months alone, there has been an increase of about 40% in terms of this fleet's usage of alternative fuels, so the executive fleet of the ministers and deputies is actually a pretty good example of the leadership and showing by example that some people mentioned. I think it's a very good illustration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to each of the witnesses for appearing today.

I just want to go back for a moment to these 45,000 buildings. I'm having trouble getting my head around that number of buildings in the federal government, especially when it refers in our briefing notes to about 500 communities. That's 90 federal buildings per community. It's over 110 buildings per riding.

Could you help me understand the range of those buildings? You broke down, for example, the different types of vehicles--executive, RCMP, Department of Defence. Is there some kind of breakdown in the types of buildings that we have? I can't imagine, for example in my riding, 110 federal buildings. I'm sure there aren't in my riding; I know that's an average. I know there are probably 400 here, but still it takes a lot of buildings here to make up for a riding that has 10 or 20.

Can you help me with that?

[Margaret Kenny]

I think that may be information we would have to get back to you with. I assure you they're not all like Place du Portage.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

And they're not all Centre Blocks.

[Margaret Kenny]

You're right. I've seen figures of the numbers on the Experimental Farm, for example, and all those itsy bitsy little buildings seem to be included. But we can certainly get that information back to you.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

And the shower rooms in our national parks would also be included.

[Anne Auger]

Perhaps I could add to that.

Office buildings with Public Works are about one-quarter of the inventory, so in terms of the number of buildings, you would divide by four. But they are office buildings mainly.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

A quarter of them.

[Anne Auger]

Yes, about that. We need to confirm those numbers.

National Defence has about half of the inventory, and the rest is divided among departments. Of course, Public Works and office buildings are mainly in the national capital area, so a big portion of the inventory is here. National Defence, for example, has buildings in remote areas more than others, perhaps. So from that you can see that most of the buildings are here.

But then, yes, that's a good point: 500 communities gives the potential to the federal government to show an image in a lot of places in the country.

We'll come back to you with details on that.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I don't need fine detail on it, but it would be helpful to know. I know they're not all high-rises. I know they're not all Centre Blocks. But it would be nice to have a bit of a breakdown.

Could you help me, as well, to understand what the differences are between your LEED gold program and your Building Owners and Managers Association's Go Green Plus? Are they complementary? Are they additive? How do they relate to each other?

[Margaret Kenny]

In fact, those programs are very complementary. The LEED standard speaks to how we actually build our buildings. The kinds of considerations that are taken into account include the site itself, water efficiency, materials and resources that are actually used in construction, what's being done with the construction waste, etc. So LEED is about building the building or renovating the building.

BOMA Go Green Plus is about how you operate the building. It's one thing to start with a green building, but if you're not operating it in an environmentally sensitive manner, then you can certainly lose a lot of the gains that you started out with. That's the difference.

So we see them as being very complementary. BOMA is the next step after LEED for us.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

So at this point BOMA isn't actually being mandated in government buildings? You're looking at this, or is it already in being?

[Margaret Kenny]

We've made the commitment. We've had to wait. BOMA just put this in place very recently and they've had to get their capacity up as well, because they actually come in and do an independent verification audit of the building. So on April 1 we start to unroll this.

Actually, this had to go into our building plans for our long-term plan way back in August. So we have a three-year plan going forward with this right now.