Government Operations Committee on Nov. 6th, 2018

[Julie Gelfand]

Actually, they talk mostly about financial stuff, so to get them to think about climate change—there are serious impacts because these auditors general who do the public accounts are now thinking about climate change in terms of whether we're going to reach our targets. But probably even more important is how much this is going to cost each territory or province, and are we ready to adapt?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

You looked at the broad GHG reduction strategy in all those jurisdictions?

[Julie Gelfand]

That's correct.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

We're talking today a little more specifically on the greening government initiative.

Within that study was there a review of what role a greening government strategy could play in the overall reduction?

[Julie Gelfand]

The simple answer was no. We did not look at that. Certain auditors general went beyond the minimal questions, but I don't believe—and Kim can answer—anyone looked at the greening of government.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay. So no one's audited the program yet or anything like that?

[Julie Gelfand]

No. We audited it in 2013, I believe, and in 2008.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I suspect in the future you will be taking a look at that.

[Julie Gelfand]

Now that we have a new strategy, yes. Maybe.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

What's my timeline, Mr. Chair? Do you I have one minute left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have one minute and 20 seconds.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Radford, I want to talk to you a little about real property. Canada's federal government owns a lot of property, but we also lease a lot of property.

What measures can be taken to do what we can to green the leased properties as well? Obviously we don't have the same impact with those, because we're not necessarily building them or doing anything, but how do we track what's going on there?

[Kevin Radford]

One of our initiatives in our net-zero carbon strategy is to also look at the leasing portfolio. We own about half our office portfolio. It's seven and a half million square metres. The other half is leased from the market.

We're having three sessions this month with the landlord community to start looking at how can we start injecting green lease clauses as we renew that leasing environment. We also struck a working group with the federal, provincial and territorial real estate group, and we have lots of interest from the provinces and territories in working with us on the development of those green lease clauses.

To answer your question more specifically, I've always found when you're working with the landlord community that it's best to have a lot of consultation before you do something on your own, and that you co-develop what those clauses and leases could look like. Then you look at the impact of those leases and maybe use those clauses and start gradually introducing them into the built sector. Our hope would be that our example might be picked up by other organizations as well.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'm out of time, but thank you very much for those answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we will now go to five-minute interventions. We will start with Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I want to go back to the pilot project for the buildings. I'm looking at the numbers for RH codes, health protection, StatsCan main and the Major-General Pearkes Building.

I'm looking at the numbers, comparing them with the pre pilot period. There are months, usually over the winter, when there's a massive increase year over year despite spending money on the pilot project to reduce that. I know some is related to the weather differential, etc.

How is backing that out to ensure we're getting success from the pilot project we're doing? I'm looking at kilowatt hours, not actual dollars. It's sometimes 20% to 30% higher year over year.

Could you keep it brief because I have a couple of other questions?

[Kevin Radford]

Leveraging smart building initiatives is an example. We can look at when the building is occupied, and we can start to try to reduce the use of some our HVAC systems when the building is less occupied, maybe start looking at reducing lighting. That would be just a small example.

With some of the organizations you mentioned, like the Major-General Pearkes Building, National Defence headquarters, there may be times when that's a 24/7 operation, but for the most part those are the types of things we can do.

From a lighting perspective, I think some of the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The pilot projects are pretty small...?

[Kevin Radford]

Yes, I certainly don't think that we'll meet the 2030 targets or the 2050 targets—any of the custodians in the federal government—by doing small lighting projects—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right.

[Kevin Radford]

—or small smart building projects.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes, I was just asking about the scope of that.

If 88% of our GHGs—let's round it up to 90%—in government is from the buildings, are we focusing 90% of our efforts on that? Or are we getting sidetracked by other things?

[Kevin Radford]

Certainly at PSPC, as the person responsible for our real estate portfolio, I'll say that we're focusing very heavily on GHG reductions from the infrastructure. I mentioned that we're at 54%. We've exceeded the 2030 targets. We're injecting in the district energy area as well, but certainly.... Are there distractions? I don't really think so. I think we're—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I wouldn't call them distractions, but if it's in line with Pareto's law of averages, the 80-20 distribution, and we see that it's 88%, are we focusing at least 88% of our efforts on the buildings?

[Kevin Radford]

It's a very interesting point of view. We haven't talked about it, but even how tenants use the facilities has a significant impact on GHG reductions as well. A 10% overall reduction in the footprint would lead to roughly a 13% reduction in GHGs. The easiest square metre to heat or light is the square metre that you don't have.