Our second principle is to ensure programs are inclusive to all Canadians. In the next 18 years, Stats Canada is projecting 25% to 31% of Canada's total population will be immigrants. In 2016, 1.7 million Canadians identified themselves as indigenous. Canadian seniors now outnumber children for the first time, and by 2031, about 23% of our population will be seniors.
Today, 1.8 million Canadian families struggle with energy poverty, which I will address in detail later.
These are not small numbers. Members of each group have specific needs in how and where they access energy efficiency information and programs. Empower Me is Canada's only energy conservation and behaviour change program designed specifically for and delivered by members of underserved communities in over nine languages.
The program focuses on four often-overlooked groups: newcomers to Canada, indigenous people, seniors and families struggling in energy poverty.
Our experience shows us that members of these communities fail to access the readily available energy efficiency education and programs available to all Canadians. To ensure these Canadians are not left behind, energy efficiency programs need to be designed to address the language, trust and accessibility barriers that these communities face.
Our teams have worked with newcomer families living in uncomfortably warm homes, with astonishingly high bills, who believed they were not allowed to touch that dial on the wall. Many families we work with do not trust authority figures like utilities or governments to help in lowering their bill. Others in this group are often the target of scams and are wary of offers promising savings and other free services.
Empower Me breaks through these barriers by finding and hiring key connectors in the community, known as mentors, to deliver information back to their own networks in a trusted and accessible way. Because mentors are well known in their communities, they're invited into sacred community spaces where traditional government and utility messaging just doesn't reach.
Six years since our inception, this approach has led to hiring and training 55 individual mentors across B.C. and Alberta from under-represented and underemployed groups, many of whom have gone on to other meaningful work in our industry. Mentors have worked with over 320,000 community members and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by over 13,000 tonnes.
To ensure continuity for the communities, Empower Me has made the strategic decision to launch as a stand-alone program and seek support from a coalition of funders: local and provincial governments, utilities and private businesses. At present, Empower Me does not receive any federal funding.
I'd now like to spend a bit of time talking about energy poverty, its link to Empower Me, and the impact to Canadians.
Households are considered to be energy poor when a disproportionate amount of their income is spent on energy bills. Today, 21%, or more than 1.8 million Canadian families, struggle to pay their bills. This means falling behind on bill payments, utility cut-offs, and tough decisions about whether to keep their families warm or purchase other basic needs.
Energy poverty is distinct from poverty. More than two-thirds of families struggling to pay their utility bills would not be considered low income by Stats Canada's LICO measure. One of the easiest ways to reduce energy poverty is to improve the energy efficiency of homes. Higher consumption in energy-poor households is driven by inefficient buildings, older appliances and individual energy use behaviour. Residential rebate programs are typically not an option for struggling families, as they require a significant portion of the upgrade costs to be funded up front. Without providing effective and fully subsidized home upgrades for these families, the cycle of energy poverty and its effects will continue.
In the early 1990s, when governments began funding solutions to energy poverty, the Empower Me leadership team helped develop one of the first programs in the U.K. Since that time, in Canada, all provinces and territories, except for Saskatchewan, have implemented energy poverty programs. However, there is currently no federal approach to addressing this issue.
In 2018, Energy Efficiency Alberta supported Empower Me to design, deliver and build the province's first program to support the 300,000 Albertan families struggling to pay their utility bills. The goal was to maximize energy savings in energy-poor households and build one of the most economical, inclusive and effective solutions to addressing energy poverty, a great example of innovation required across the value chain to maximize impact.