Thank you, Minister, for being with us again today.
When you were last here, just before Christmas, we talked about energy retrofits. The chair was right that this subject would come up again. I just want to go back to it. I was then thanking your government for actually looking at retrofits and bringing back that home retrofit program, which was so successful before.
I mentioned that Efficiency Canada, the body that studies this and lives it, says that spending has to be 10 times what it is. They came out with a recent analysis on one of the specific areas in which it can and has to be much more bold, and that's in the area of energy poverty. Twenty per cent of Canadians live in households where their energy costs are 6% or more of their income. These programs are not accessible to lower-income homeowners. Efficiency Canada says these people cannot be reasonably expected to pay for the upfront costs required to access later rebates, or take on additional debts to do so. That means 20% of Canadian households won't be able to access these programs, and these are the people who need it the most. These houses are often the older, less efficient ones that need retrofitting the most.
They have put forward what they call a “transformative” goal to retrofit all homes experiencing energy poverty by 2030. That would, as I say, cost a lot more money than you're projecting to spend. They said we should be spending on that part of the program at least what we're spending through your program on commercial and residential retrofits for higher-income families.
I'm wondering if you can pledge today to do that.