Evidence of meeting #76 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was building.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
President, Energy Services Association of Canada
I agree with that. I think it's probably best if you do the targets and goals by department. Again, no one is responsible for an overall government goal, or those who are responsible are so high up. I would encourage you to be...and maybe even get down to a particular building.
Once you've done your benchmarking, you should be able to say these are the buildings you want to focus on for the next five years, whatever buildings they are, and you want to have an annual report on the progress you're making; in five years' time, you'd like to see some end.... Here are the tools you can use, of which a performance contract is one, but you may have other ones. Again, I think a little competition.... This race to produce I'm involved with in Toronto with BOMA and with REALpac has really been interesting, and it's been fun.
People like a friendly competition. Mayors love it. I know MPs love it. You don't have to have body contact or anything, but I think you set some targets and see how ministers and ministries can perform, and as long as the rules are fair, as long as you're not pre-selecting a particular winner and making the rules so someone wins. So set your targets by department and make a bit of a game of it, because I think people do like that internal competition, and I think that's where it can drive innovation as well. Right now, it's everyone's issue. We talk about it, it's out there, but it's no one's real responsibility.
12:35 p.m.
Director, Government Relations and Policy, Real Property Association of Canada
I would just say that targets are key to this entire program, and when we look at what our members have started to do, it's publishing and actively putting out their energy use numbers, and that is so important to the end game in this. It's not a public shaming if your building falls below the target you set, but it does give you a clear goal and a clear path forward, and that's something I think will go a long way in any government program.
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
John has already spoken for us, but I will add one comment, and it's that I'm relatively new to my position—John is too—and I think it's fair to say that BOMA runs the dominant awards program for building management in the industry. I was amazed at how seriously our stakeholders take those awards. It is the playoffs, and they really care, so that that speaks to the comments that you heard from the others here today. It also empowers the people who are in the trenches, so to speak, actually operating the buildings, to learn and grow and understand that the choices they make will affect the outputs at the end of the day. So it can't be underscored enough. I was quite amazed at how competitive and seriously it's taken.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
President, Edmonton, Luminescence Lighting
To repeat the comment about keeping it simple and educating the departments, the more troops we have on the street, the more we're going to get done in a short timeframe.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you.
I gather from the earlier discussion that the LEED standard and the BOMA standard are in some sense competitive. You mentioned that yours applied more to the existing stock and theirs more to new buildings.
I don't want to pit witness against witness, but I can't help but notice that in the REALpac submission on page 8, recommendation 5 says:
Commitment of the federal government...to achieve LEED NC Gold for all new buildings, and LEED EB Gold for its entire inventory over the next 10 year period.
So does that mean you're exhibiting a preference for the LEED standard?
12:40 p.m.
Director, Government Relations and Policy, Real Property Association of Canada
No, we support both and we view them as complementary.
March 5th, 2013 / 12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
A lot of buildings have both.
12:40 p.m.
Director, Energy and Environment, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
The key feature about the BOMA BESt program is that it really tries to be as inclusive as possible, so the idea is to raise the vast majority of buildings to a higher standard rather than a select group to a very high standard. You can gain significantly more from an environmental perspective by looking at the entire stock rather than a very limited stock.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I think this point was raised earlier about the FBI project. Starting in 1994, there was definitely a lot in the nineties. There's been a sharp drop since. Is that just because at the beginning there's more low-lying fruit? What is the reason?
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Last year they only did five projects, in 2010 they only had one.
12:40 p.m.
President, Energy Services Association of Canada
Yes. I've looked at it to try to correlate it to economic trends. I've looked at it in terms of political leadership. I can't discern a very good correlation.
The best I can come up with is that it's an idea that caught on very early. It was new and exciting, and it was successful, but those people, through promotion and other things, go on to other positions, and again, within the departments, they lose a bit of corporate memory about it. For some of these projects that were done in these departments 10 years ago, no one has any idea that they were done, because the person who was responsible is not there anymore.
It's a good program. There are good employees there. They understand it. I think it needs to be revitalized and promoted. This is why I think coming back to this benchmark and setting some objectives would do that. You have all the tools. They're all there and ready to go.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Okay. Coming back to that, what I just read is that the entire inventory of federal buildings would be up to some standard over the next 10-year period.
If we go back to the discussion about objectives, about goals, would it be fair to say that a target for the next five years would be that every department would have half of its remaining buildings at this level, and then for the next five years the remaining half? Is that appropriate or is that too ambitious?
12:40 p.m.
President, Energy Services Association of Canada
I think you want some analysis before arbitrarily saying those numbers. It wouldn't be very hard to look at that existing building stock and say, “Here are the ones that really should be done, and it is feasible to do it over the next five years.” I'd be reluctant to set a arbitrary number right now, but there are certainly many more that could be done.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Okay. Well, the spirit of what I said is certainly consistent with your own targets.
12:40 p.m.
Director, Government Relations and Policy, Real Property Association of Canada
Yes, and I'd add that buildings have different lifespans, and we wouldn't want to interrupt and make a major retrofit to a building if that chiller or boiler, for example, didn't need to come out yet. We do look at this in the short term for some retrofits, but it certainly is a long-term game. Whether it takes you five years or 10 years to do, there should be a plan in place to get you to a certain target.
12:45 p.m.
Director, Energy and Environment, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
Just very quickly, since dozens and in fact hundreds of Public Works buildings, and not only the ones they own, but ones that are managed and leased, are going through our process, we would actually have the data over the next little while to be able to actually report back to the committee in terms of what the results are from those buildings.
12:45 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada
We could also add that the government's profile of building stock is going to be wildly different from that of a regular private sector player because of the breadth of the activities of the government.
We stand ready to create new modules that would properly capture the energy and environmental profiles of prisons, which have energy environmental profiles, and also of military bases, which also do, and these aren't going to be captured in a sort of general application office module, or by putting in the office side of military and the multi-residential side for the soldiers' quarters, for instance.
We are prepared to work with government to do that. That would give you a much more meaningful analysis of the endless variations of the buildings that you have.
