Government Operations Committee on April 16th, 2013

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm specifically interested in where we might lease the building, because then we're the tenants.

[Dean Karakasis]

Where you lease the building, our challenge is that my members don't actually speak to the tenants in many ways. They have to go through Public Works, who then go through the client group, who then go to the tenants. Our opportunities become floor space: a sign in the elevator, a sign in the lobby.

There needs to be a much more coordinated effort between government and the private sector in those circumstances to ask how we engage tenants, how we help them make the right choices to move forward and to save energy. We have no control of that. We're not allowed. We have no control whatsoever.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

How about opening up leases?

[Dean Karakasis]

I'm not sure what you mean in terms of opening up a lease. Change the terms of a lease? That doesn't engage the tenant.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm presuming a lot of leases are long term, 10 or 20 years, and so you set the rate that you're paying, but as the federal government wants to reduce its energy costs, it may potentially have to open up that lease and negotiate something.

I'm wondering if any of the witnesses have had experience with that in buildings.

[Dean Karakasis]

I appreciate that concept, but when I speak to tenant engagement, I need us to get away from the idea of the person who's dealing with the lease versus the people who are physically occupying the space. It's really about behavioural change.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Right. That's my second question. I'm wondering if you could address that.

[Dean Karakasis]

When you talk about opening up the lease to change terms and conditions within a lease, to create targets, I would say a more fundamental way of doing it is simply upon renewals, which happen all the time, to make them part of the specifications for getting into a building. That's what Public Works is already looking at doing.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Karakasis. That's all the time we have for that round.

Next for the Conservatives is the vice-chair of the committee, Mr. Peter Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here and for very helpful and thoughtful presentations today.

Mr. Dalgleish, I'll start with you, given your time constraints. You mentioned in your opening remarks that you were concerned about the possibility of Canada's losing some leadership role on the world stage in this area.

In December, through NRCan, the federal government finalized a new Energy Star rating system and labelling system for residential homes at least, at a minimum. I believe that the program over time will be expanded to commercial and office buildings as well.

Are you familiar with the program? Do you have any thoughts on the program, and will this type of program help us to regain some leadership?

[Laverne Dalgleish]

The short answer to your question is yes, I'm very familiar with the program. About 70% of our business is on the American side now, so we work closely with both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

I think the step forward that the government has taken on this is very good. I think we've got to do a lot more, but if you're taking this back to the leadership, we're picking up a program that the Americans developed. We should have developed the programs and had the Americans pick them up from us, but it's better than not doing anything at all, absolutely, and I think it's a major step forward, even on simple things. We had our energy use scale backwards, and the world had it the other way. We're now switching it around to the energy scale that everybody else uses, where zero is zero; if you don't use any energy, then your scale is zero. In Canada we had 100 as zero.

EnerGuide 80, for argument's sake, is one of the things that we looked at in the building codes, but we just weren't harmonized, and it was hard for consumers and building owners to understand that if they got 100, that was good.

Again, going back to your question, I don't think that addresses the leadership issue, but it definitely helps us move forward.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you. If only the Americans would adopt the metric system, we'd be in great shape.

You mentioned the NRC as well, and so did Mr. Cane.

Mr. Dalgliesh, do you have any thoughts on the role of the NRC? Is there anything that it could be doing today that it's not to help promote energy efficiency in buildings generally across Canada and specifically for government buildings?

[Laverne Dalgleish]

I think the NRC is in position to actually do a tremendous amount of work to assist not only the federal government in improving the efficiency of its buildings, but in getting back to leadership.

I've been working with NRC for about 30 years. When I first started working with them, they were known throughout the world as leaders in how to make energy-efficient buildings, materials, and so on. Over the years, for a bunch of other reasons, cutbacks and all the rest of the stuff, NRC has become a lame duck, and that's such a shame because, if you talk about experts in thermal insulation and building efficiency and so on with people around the world, it's the Clifford Shirtliffes, Mike Swintons, and Kumar Kumarans and all these people who have brought Canada forward.

NRC is still doing some good research and things like that, but they could do so much more, and it would help everybody, including the federal government, with their buildings.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

At this point I'll go to Mr. Cane.

Any thoughts on that? Is the NRC a lame duck? You've been involved with the NRC in the building code. Do you have any comments?

[Doug Cane]

I was going to say I know the year he was talking about. I worked there when I first graduated, in the division of building research. The point I made earlier about code development, I think that's critical, but NRC doesn't have a mandate to get the provinces to adopt the code, right? That's something that NRCan is responsible for. That would go a long way: how we promote the code to the provinces to ensure they adopt it.

The last time, when we did the MNECB, only two provinces...in fact, it was just the City of Vancouver and the Province of Ontario that adopted the MNECB. I don't know how it's going currently on the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings 2011, but I'm hoping that more provinces will adopt it. That's a starting point, a significant starting point. That is an NRC-led undertaking.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

That's a good point.

Mr. Dalgleish, this is out of the scope of our study, but you mentioned it so I'm going to ask you about it. Forty per cent of landfill is construction waste. That seems very high to me. Is there not an opportunity to bring that down or to recycle construction waste? Can we not do a better job there?

[Laverne Dalgleish]

Absolutely. We can make a tremendous improvement in that area. The point I was trying to make is that, when we think of energy efficiency, we think of saving kilowatts, or gallons of oil, or therms of gas, but there are so many other benefits. Our landfills are being strained in some cases beyond capacity, and a lot of this stuff doesn't have to end up there. It can be recycled, reused. There are a lot of small organizations doing this type of thing, but there's no major push in that direction that I can see.

We've actually had our first success on the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings 2011. The Province of B.C. officially adopted it last week, and the City of Vancouver will be following very, very shortly, so at least we're going in the right direction.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That concludes your time, Peter. Thank you very much.

Next, for the NDP, we have Denis Blanchette.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank our guests for joining us today.

My first question is for Mr. Dalgleish.

You implied that we should not necessarily focus only on ways to save energy. You seem to suggest a more holistic and comprehensive approach to the construction and renovation of buildings. We could eventually want to achieve net zero energy consumption in buildings. There may be some other concerns, including those mentioned by my colleague Mr. Braid.

Conceptually, do we have what it takes to plan the construction and renovation of buildings with that approach in mind?

[Laverne Dalgleish]

I fully believe that we do. I think we have an opportunity for leadership. When I was thinking about this, I was hesitant about using the word “leadership”, because to me that's a little bit passive. I think we have an opportunity here for the federal government to be very active, and that goes beyond just doing a building. How do we get the message out? How do we show other building owners what can be done to the building? We'd need it more holistic. But we do have the technology, whether it be high-performance insulation, high-performing windows, or extremely high efficiencies on mechanical equipment. We have efficiencies in lighting. Some of the architects in Vancouver, without any encouragement, are now meeting the requirements of the 100 equivalent kilowatt hours per square metre per annum. So, yes, we have the technology and the ability to do that to our buildings.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Cane.

You said that we should gradually replace the American model with the European one.

Could you tell us what we would gain—more specifically in terms of public buildings—by adopting European building codes?

[Doug Cane]

With respect to my point earlier about the Europeans, people have already mentioned that the Europeans have adopted a system where they have a target of so many units of energy per square metre, and each building has a label under its building code. I don't think they have any technology that we don't have. I don't think that's a limitation. I really don't know how to address your question, other than to say that I think everything's available to us that would be available to the Europeans. We don't have that approach, the building labelling approach. Maybe something like that instituted in Canada, along with our codes, would be helpful. I think the next version of the National Energy Code of Canada, in 2015, will likely have building targets.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

So the technologies used in Europe are clearly available here.

What specifically do we need to turn those available technologies into results? It seems that the Europeans are more effective than we are in using a technology to achieve objectives and results. What does our public administration need to transform those technologies that have potential into the desired results?

[Doug Cane]

That's a good question. I would think what the government could maybe do is consider demonstration projects to show how, for example, we can achieve a net zero in buildings. That will use a lot of technologies that you wouldn't see on a day-to-day basis in building design. A lot more renewable energy would be used in buildings. Perhaps that's one approach that could be taken.