Human Resources Committee on Oct. 29th, 2024

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair. I'd like to thank both of the witnesses for being here.

I just want to quickly ask a question off the top regarding the building code. I know there have been conversations already in this meeting about the building code, and we've actually heard throughout the duration of this study at different meetings that the code needs to be quicker to adapt to innovations and be an acceptable building code solution and that, in some cases, the gap is resulting in costly over-engineering because the code isn't adapting quickly enough.

I'm just wondering what government can do to ensure that affordability and cost-effectiveness are factored into the building code.

[Carol Phillips]

I think this issue of adopting proofs is an important one. To be quite straightforward about it, oftentimes, in order to achieve fire ratings, etc., there is no other way to do this but to simply add more and more material to something. You take a combustible item and wrap it in something that is non-combustible, so you're building something twice. There is kind of this over-engineering, but it's also about just trying to understand how we can get that adopted into the national building code and perhaps allowing municipalities to reference the national building code and not just the provincial building code when they're working on buildings.

I think education for building departments is a huge part that can be done. I think governments can support building engineers who examine these projects to understand what they are actually...taking them on tours to show them the performance.

Then in terms of affordability—and this doesn't have to do with the codes and regulations; it has to do with the insurance for these buildings—I think the insurance companies need to understand that these buildings are safe and not apply the kinds of premiums they are applying to the projects. We need affordability for clients to be able to consider these building methodologies without being punitive to them.

David, did you have anything to add?

[David Moses]

For me, the struggles I see with our clients are more on the development side, the zoning, the local bylaw and dealing with that. Then, it's a trickle down from the national building code into each of the provinces or territories and their usage of the code and the local authority that has to then sign-off and issue that building permit.

If there's slowness or sluggishness in that process, I believe that is where it's going to come from. I think the mechanisms are probably in the code as we speak. We've already mentioned a few of these things today, like the alternative solutions or other approaches, but documenting that and making it accessible to everybody....

In the early days of adopting new ideas, once we found a building official who was willing to buy into our idea, we would get them to talk to their peer in another jurisdiction when we tried to build in that jurisdiction. That peer-to-peer discussion made the difference, as opposed to top-down.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Moses, you have the mic here. Just picking up on some of your earlier comments about the way government funding programs are structured and how that limits access to them, can you comment more on how the federal government can encourage investments in innovative building solutions through its programming? Do you have specific examples of how the current structure or program practices discourage innovative home building?

[David Moses]

We get a lot of companies coming to us with a new idea. They're ready to ramp up, so maybe they have to struggle to get their funding to ramp up internally. But even when they get to that point, they need to get in front of a potential client. The way the process is set up currently, if I'm a developer and I want to build something, I will go to what I know, something that I've used every time and been successful with, so I'm not going to change my ways.

But if I can get in front of that person at the beginning, when they're making that first choice, then we can design the building around what's available from a factory and say, okay, this is their limitation, this is what they can produce. We're going to lay out our building in such a manner or we're going to look for how the zoning could affect the potential use of that product. That takes time and money. That's what we call "design assist". It's an early phase of design before you even get into the full design, where you contemplate what the options are. But there are costs to it, and they are additional costs, so people don't want to do it.

I think that might be a way to look at it. Let's look at some options. Let's bring some potential players to the table and and see what could happen there. What do these options look like?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Falk.

Mr. Coteau, you have five minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

We've heard a lot of different testimony on mass timber and its value, including from other witnesses. It's something that I support. I agree with all of the points that are being made. But when I did research, there are some critics out there who say that the weather can have an impact—natural elements, insects, termites, water, fire. Maybe you can take a moment, if you feel comfortable, dispelling or debunking some of those criticisms that get applied to mass timber. How valuable is this and how resilient is the resource when we're building structures today?

Either person can respond.

[David Moses]

I can start.

We talk about mass timber; it's something we've specialized in, but we see a lot of other products in steel and concrete that are coming forward that are really providing good solutions as well. And now we're looking at combining them all and making these hybrid structures.

If we want to talk specifically about timber, I think we have dispelled a lot of these myths. If you want to talk about fire, we have excellent fire engineering that happens now, which just didn't exist before. But we have existing over a hundred-year-old buildings. One of my office buildings we're in is just over 100 years old, and it's all timber. It's nail-laminated timber, which has worked just fine all of these years, but we went away from it. Now it's a renaissance and we're coming back to it. But when they built those, they didn't have the same technologies we do now. We talk about encapsulation. We have active fire sprinkler systems and other technologies. That part of it, I'm comfortable with. That's where a lot of the research and energy has gone into developing it.

As for the other items, yes, we are always concerned about moisture during construction, but that's also countered by our surrounding the building and closing it in it rains during construction. Let's close it in faster. These prefabricated systems actually address that because the buildings go together so much faster.

And I'm sorry, were there other—

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

No, that's fine.

I think it would be good for that to be in the record of the report, because it's important that it has come a long way over the last few decades, to become such a resilient resource.

Ms. Phillips, you talked about its being a Canadian solution, which I think is a great thing. Every province and territory having their own approach to it and uniqueness, I think, is also a good thing.

You talked a little bit about setting up this committee. Every province and territory, as you know, has different codes and different standards. We've heard from witnesses who talked about how even procurement approval for design, permitting processes and codes are all over the place in the country.

The committee that you mentioned, this task force, would it be made up of different members throughout all of the provinces and territories, different municipalities, the federal government? How do you envision its being organized?

[Carol Phillips]

Thank you for the question.

I think it could happen at a couple of levels.

In a province, if you look at the tiers of government.... I can give you an example. For instance, if you pick a sector, right now, we're looking at a kit-of-parts elementary school. The provincial standards for space allotments that dictate how much space per child is given to a school don't speak directly to exactly what David was talking about—the economically viable manufacturing dimensions. It comes down to numbers and space. You are precluding technology being advanced, because you're embedding inefficiencies in that. You've given a certain kind of dimension to a room that just doesn't work with the manufacturing in an economic way. If you can get those conversations happening with the manufacturers, you could also get the provincial regulations speaking to the municipal, and understand the federal initiatives, as well.

I think it could work within a province, but there needs to be interprovincial dialogue to help the different industries across the country. There are new factories coming up now in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and there is certainly an embedded, robust industry in Quebec and a robust industry in British Columbia. How do we bridge right across...? Is ask this because the forest bridges right across the country. There is potential in that economic engine, and it's renewable.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

We have less than two minutes. Is it the will of the committee to adjourn?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay. It's the will of the committee to adjourn. The committee will meet again on Thursday.

With that, I want to thank the witnesses.

Thank you, Ms. Phillips and Mr. Moses, for your testimony before the committee today. I really liked your testimony on old buildings. We seem to have a notion in Canada that it's no good unless we tear down and build totally new.

The committee is adjourned.