Human Resources Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses who are with us.

Mr. Berube, your company is based in Ontario, and you build prefabricated steel-frame homes.

Did I understand correctly?

[Andy Berube]

I'm not hearing the English version. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I'm sorry. We'll suspend for a moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You may resume, Ms. Chabot.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Berube, your company is based in Ontario, and you build prefabricated steel-frame homes.

Did I understand correctly?

[Andy Berube]

We don't use mass timber. We use structural steel. Our factory is based in Ontario.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Has the demand for the type of product you're offering increased?

Is there an appetite for this type of construction?

[Andy Berube]

Absolutely. There is a demand and it's increasing year over year. I've been in this business for 12 or 13 years and it hasn't slowed down. The interest at all levels is increasing.

We're in a fantastic industry. It's complicated. It's construction. In general, the industry is construction, and we need more houses, so we're just a part of the solution to build more houses.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Berube, you are right to say that more housing construction is needed. The committee has actually conducted a few studies on the topic, and it has looked at the issue of demand. We're looking for solutions that will ensure that what gets built is affordable. There's a need for affordable housing, whether it's apartments or houses.

How could your technology or your way of doing things help with housing affordability?

[Andy Berube]

There are two parts to that answer. At factory level, bringing in more technology and more systems to reduce factory costs will, in turn, translate into lower costs on that side.

Lowering the cost at the site on the construction side is really about a rapid delivery. Think about time as money. You can build a building in a traditional sense in two years. If you can cut that in half, or even to three-quarters, and it's 12 to 15 months, you would have it five, six or seven months quicker. Time is money. Every month you're on the job, it costs everybody more money and it creates more problems—with, obviously, fewer houses on the market.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Berube, you talked about the obstacles to overcome, including standardization. You didn't talk about uniformity, but about consistency among all levels of government and collaboration.

As we know, the realities of governments, be it Quebec or the provinces, differ from one another. The geographic landscape, the type of needs and the demand are different. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think there needs to be a uniform application across Canada. We also have to take into account the territorial reality of Quebec and of each province.

What does consistency among levels of government mean to you?

[Andy Berube]

Yes, it is more complicated than just saying we're going to have a standard that works for everybody. The more detail you get into, the more restricted you get, and it's not only at the municipal or provincial levels, because everybody has their own rules and regulations. It will also restrict each factory. We're steel, but if a particular factory is wood and a project is more conducive to wood, you would have a standard that is so detailed that it stops the options in the market.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying there has to be a balance between the standards of design so that they don't make it so restricted. It's so fundamental that it should work in most provinces and territories, if not all.

There is a balance. A common denominator needs to be understood at all levels. It's not easy. We say a “common design”, but it's a much deeper conversation than that.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Smith, I find it hard to see how comparisons can be made between North America and Europe. I find that very interesting, but it seems to me that the territory and the climate, for example, are quite different.

How is Europe a model for North America?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Please give a short answer, Mr. Smith.

[Stephen Smith]

They are often not as different as it's painted. In Europe, there are many different countries. One of the projects of European integration and cohesion has been standardizing across the continent from very high-income places like Switzerland—which isn't even in the European Union, but typically follows EU standards—to low-income places like Romania, where my mother lives. You have vast differences in climate, from southern Italy to the top of Norway, yet they have found a lot of ways to integrate within themselves.

There are many places in Europe that have climates that are like those in Canada. You have similar languages. There are more similarities than differences. Fire burns the same. Structures and materials have the same properties. I think there are more similarities than is often portrayed in the construction industry in North America.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Ms. Zarrillo, you have six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to go to Mr. Berube first.

I think about the fact that we're not operational. We're legislators, and what can we really do? My focus is always life and safety in relation to this one.

I'm thinking about how we need to modernize the federal code, and you mentioned the standardization and also talked about how complex that is. I think about Vancouver where, in the eighties or actually the early nineties, they did the California building code on a number of multi-family buildings. They didn't have rain screens, and their egresses are totally flooded all the time.

I just want to think about life and safety on a federal level. What is the federal space with regard to life and safety when you talk about sustainability? I think about climate change in my community. My community was the one where two people died with the atmospheric river recently. One house was washed away.

Where does sustainability play role in the federal code? I'll add on top of that rural and remote communities and indigenous communities, where we know that housing is desperately needed. How do we also roll in accessibility for persons with disabilities and for the aging population? How could the federal government have a role in that life and safety focus?

[Andy Berube]

I think you already have that. There are policies and procedures that, you know, any method of construction has to follow around safety. The specific code is not my expertise, but that code, whatever the policies are.... We have to adhere to that in the factory.

With respect to the part of your question around disabilities or first nations, it comes at the design level. Collaboration with the design to accommodate whatever we need with respect to safety is part of what we do. When we're building something, if the design and the build needs to accommodate a variety of different things in that particular jurisdiction or demographic, we build to the design, and we collaborate with the architects to design what's needed for that particular community because it is different. I think it's fundamentally there.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

It becomes a challenge because there are so many.... I mean, I heard what you were saying about the different materials that can be used. It might be the same design but a different material. How do we give you the flexibility but still maintain the life and safety? Then, who makes those decisions? That's what I'm struggling with.

[Andy Berube]

Are you referring more to the standardization of design, or are you just talking about how we build and the materials we build with?

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I think that it's the standardization of design.

Let's talk about egress. If we have a federal code that says that for x square footage you need two egresses, is that detailed enough or too detailed when you go to manufacture something and have to think about where it's going to be, where it's going to be placed, how it's going to get there, what the transportation capabilities are, what labour is available in that area...? There are just so many factors.

What role can the federal government really play when there's so much that needs to be done to get it built on site?

[Andy Berube]

I think it does circle back to that the federal government can actually communicate more effectively or can align with the different levels of government. We, as a factory, whether it be conventional or off-site construction, can build to whatever that policy is that is set up. However, the challenge is that the policy that you set up here is not consistent. We can be ready to do whatever you want—we're ready—but it doesn't happen fast enough because of the lack of alignment between the governments.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

That's interesting to me because I wonder whether the federal code is too restrictive and whether the federal code should really be focused more narrowly on life and safety.

[Andy Berube]

Possibly.