Natural Resources Committee on April 15th, 2010

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

But particularly in terms of air sealing and insulation, we aren't short of houses in Canada that still need to improve their air sealing and insulation, are we? You don't have that impression, do you?

[Carol Buckley]

No, I don't have that impression. This program will reach about 5% of the low-rise building stock, which is a significant number of houses, but it also means there are other houses still with energy efficiency retrofits to be done.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

So is the government considering a new program to replace this one?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Regan--

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'm sure she's dying to answer, Mr. Chairman. It's a very short question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, a very short answer.

[Carol Buckley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to answer the question.

As the Speech from the Throne and budget 2010 indicated, the government is doing a review of its energy efficiency and clean energy programs, and that review will look at the effectiveness and the efficiency questions that have come up this morning many times with respect to how those programs are spending public money and reaching the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other things. And ministers will simply take decisions about future programs at that time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

We go now to the Bloc Québécois.

Madam Brunelle, you have up to seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning, gentlemen.

Mr. Tanguay, you referred to low income households, and rightly so. I think your observations are important because the segment of the population that needs these programs the most would undoubtedly be left out. It really makes me think about those people who indicated that there are health-related issues in those households, that they are poor, they do not have a healthy diet; but these people do not have the means to eat well. It is a vicious circle.

I was wondering to what extent the ecoENERGY programs complement the provincial programs. Are the provinces not closer to the consumers' needs and are they not in a better position to implement those programs? Is there duplication? That is what you seemed to indicate earlier.

[Marc-Olivier Moisan-Plante, Economist, Union des consommateurs]

For the time being there is no duplication because there is no Canadian renovation program for low- income households. The Agence de l'efficacité énergétique in Quebec is trying to develop such a program. So that is the situation for low-income households right now. There is no program duplication.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Tanguay, you spoke of the difficult situation renters find themselves in. They cannot benefit from these programs because the owners, in those cases, are not as interested. You can see where the problem lies.

Do you have any suggestions? Have you explored that? Should there be direct assistance for renters, or something along those lines?

[Charles Tanguay]

We are looking at all possible solutions, but one solution might be to place more emphasis on energy efficiency when renting housing. This could be achieved, in our opinion, by attributing energy rating to apartments. There are initiatives that target the owners of income generating apartment blocks. They are getting established, but not without difficulty. Programs really need to be quite creative in order to attract the interest of the owners of multiple income properties. At the same time, there have to be ways of ensuring any renovations to improve such properties do not systematically lead to rent hikes.

It is a really difficult situation to address, but I think that rental housing energy ratings would certainly be one way of improving the situation.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

Mrs. Buckley, there was something in your presentation, on page 5, that concerned me. I can see that, if you compare examples in Quebec and those in Ontario, in Ontario there are 1,182 advisors and a very significant number of evaluations in comparison to Quebec, where there are 134.

Does more advisors mean more evaluations before renovations? And does Quebec, with its 47,000 pre-renovation evaluation requests get its fair share under the program? Is it simply because there have been fewer applications?

Furthermore, I can see, if you look at the table—and if I have understood correctly— that British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec account for about half the renovations carried out. Prior to renovation, there were 47,172 applications; and post-renovation, 19,600. So about half the desired renovation projects are actually carried out, if I have understood correctly.

What is preventing people from going through with the renovations? Is it the red tape or are there simply not enough advisors?

[Carol Buckley]

Thank you for the question.

As you pointed out, it is a question of applications.

The Province of Ontario got out very early, in response to our program launch in 2007, to offer a matching dollar-per-dollar program and to subsidize the evaluation. There's also quite significant participation from utilities in some cities and municipalities in Ontario. That drove a very early response and a buildup of the industry in Ontario. It has driven the number of energy advisers available and the take-up in the population.

We see that in a province. Whenever the province joins, the take-up in that province starts to double and triple because of the doubled impact of having more than one order of government involved, and then there are the other complementary programs as well. In the case of Quebec, it joined with its complementary program somewhat later than the Ontario program did, and it does provide support, as does the Ontario government, to the consumer, but it simply reflects less demand in the province of Quebec and less support from the provincial and/or utility programs.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

We heard a lot of criticisms from consumers since you put an end to evaluation applications. What percentage of applications were denied as a result of your abruptly deciding to put an end to pre-renovation evaluations?

[Carol Buckley]

Thank you for the question.

The method of limiting intake that we selected was to stop accepting bookings for pre-retrofit evaluations. That provided fairness to consumers who might live in an area that doesn't have as many energy advisers and where they might have to wait longer for a pre-retrofit evaluation than they would in an area where there are lots of advisors.

If we had limited intake by saying that all those who had a pre-retrofit evaluation were in the program and those who hadn't had the evaluation yet weren't in the program, there would have been some inequity between people who hadn't yet had access to their evaluation. So we limited access in the booking. If someone had booked an appointment, then they would eventually get their pre-retrofit evaluation, and they could participate in the program.

We have not cancelled any participation by anyone who has had a booking. Anyone who had a booking can continue through the program, and anyone who had a pre-retrofit evaluation can go ahead and go through the program.

So yes, there probably exists out there people who hadn't made the phone call yet and hadn't booked their pre-retrofit evaluation, but we don't have any numbers on them because they had not taken any action yet to enter the program in any way, shape, or form. We have no way of calculating what those numbers would be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Madam Brunelle, your time is up.

We'll go to Mr. Cullen now.

Go ahead, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Let's follow this through. This was seen as a very successful program by the government. It had a 10:1 ratio of private dollars to public dollars. No other program comes close to that, I assume, in terms of leveraging funds. Is that true?

[Carol Buckley]

I don't have those numbers in my head. It's certainly high for an incentive program, but non-incentive programs would certainly have a higher degree of leverage.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Right. So it's $10 for every $1 coming in. The government likes the program. If I get the order of sequence right, in the throne speech the government congratulated itself on a great program. The budget announced more money for the program. The website announced no more intakes.

You understand the different orders of degree here. When the government goes public with something, it's when things are great. When it sticks it seven clicks in on a website somewhere, cancelling it, it's not because it's celebrating anymore. That tends to be the trend we see within government.

I'm confused by something, Ms. Buckley. You talked about respecting budget allocations. You folks have to deal with the budget you're presented. That's not a decision you made. That's a political decision made further up the chain as to how much money to give to certain programs.

You used the term “not taking applications”. The program for any Canadian trying to access this has, in effect, been cancelled. It doesn't exist. If I were to decide tomorrow that I wanted to go and get access to this program, it's not there any more--that's true?--because of this evaluation that you're going through right now.

[Carol Buckley]

Absolutely. The program is no longer taking new applications.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Okay. What I'm confused by is the argument you've used to this point, that you needed to review the program.

Can the government not review the program while the program still exists? Does that not happen all the time in government, where we have a program that exists and we want to review its effectiveness? We don't need to cancel things to review them. Where is my logic missing?

[Carol Buckley]

No, absolutely, your logic is sound. A government can certainly review a program while running the program. We do that on an ongoing basis. In this case the decision was made to limit intake at a time that would respect the existing budget we have available to us, which is $745 million in total.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You talk about limiting intake. Basically, the program doesn't exist. It has been put in abeyance for new applications. It may come again, but it doesn't exist right now. It's been cancelled.

I'm trying to explain this to the constituents I have—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

On a point of order, Mr. Anderson.