In part it is a market issue, where granite countertops are more important than an energy efficient house. When a builder builds the house, he generally doesn't promote that.
I live in Barrhaven, in Ottawa—and some of us know that Barrhaven is growing into what some say is a sprawling community—and we have builders putting up homes faster than you can shake a stick at. Now, I didn't hear one word about energy efficiency, but they told me about my granite countertops and they told me about the two-lane driveway. They told me everything else but. So I'm not even given the option of whether I want an upgrade to make my home energy efficient unless I ask the questions, I guess.
Unless the builders are prepared to help market these houses actively and they see a business case model to do that, it's hard for them to do it. If you have two builders effectively building up a community and one of them has maybe decided to do two or three of these homes, unless the other one sees his market decline as a result, why would he pursue it?
It's in part trying to incent the builders and to educate the consumers on where we want to go as a nation with a policy. That's part of the challenge, and it does mean transforming the marketplace; it means intervention into the marketplace on the part of government.
Markets will ultimately solve things at the end of the day, but this needs support at the front end. The United States, Asian, and European models are all out there to demonstrate that's probably the preferred path.