Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 1st, 2022

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that. It has given me a little bit of background on that piece.

I am going to shift to someone else, so I think you're off the hot seat for the parts about satellites.

I want to talk a little bit about green construction and what we are doing to advance innovations on that. Just about a couple of meetings ago we had someone come to speak about the role of forestry in green buildings, and about tall timber construction and its role in green buildings.

I won't direct my question to anyone specifically. You will have to let me know who the right person is.

Could I get a bit more about what we're doing to build innovation in green buildings?

[John Hannaford]

I'll turn to my colleague, Drew Leyburne.

[Drew Leyburne, Assistant Deputy Minister, Energy Efficiency and Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources]

Thank you, Chair.

This is an area that NRCan has been very active on in recent years, working with partners around the federal family, the National Research Council and others.

As you know, there are a number of different materials that we consider when we talk about green buildings. One is engineered wood products, and obviously NRCan has a deep interest in that. My colleague Glenn Hargrove could probably speak to that.

We do know that the embedded carbon in the materials we build these buildings with is a crucial part of getting to net zero. It's not just the heating systems, the appliances and the other things that consume energy; it's also the carbon that's baked into the way we build and dispose of buildings over time.

We have work happening in the CanmetENERGY labs to look at building envelopes and materials and how they can be reduced. We also recently announced that we would be working on a low-carbon building materials innovation hub, working across the federal family to push this science even further.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Great.

I don't know whether Mr. Hargrove has anything to add specifically about the tall timber and forestry piece.

[Glenn Hargrove]

Thank you. I'd be happy to.

You'll also notice that there's the green construction through wood program, which was originally announced in budget 2017 under the pan-Canadian framework on climate change. This program aims at reducing the carbon footprint of construction in Canada and increasing the use of wood in non-traditional construction applications.

To date, that program is committed to supporting 16 demonstration projects. These include things like high-rise buildings and low-rise non-residential buildings, timber bridges, and those sorts of non-traditional uses. An example would be the 10-storey Limberlost Place, a tall wood building at George Brown College. There are three mass timber buildings on the campus of the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which will be the first nuclear campus to use wood as a structural building material.

These sorts of initiatives really help to increase the use of wood in these non-traditional applications and thereby also reduce the embodied carbon in buildings, as Drew alluded to.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I'm going to have to jump in here. We're out of time.

I would like to thank all of the officials for joining us, both in person and online today.

Before we let you go, I do have one question for the members.

We are going to be voting momentarily on the supplementary estimates (B). Some items were asked for from officials during the course of the meeting today. Because we'll be voting, the information would be for information only. The question is, do you still want our clerk to follow up with the items that were requested to be sent back and circulated?

Okay, we'll follow up with officials for the items that were requested.

If you could get that information back to us as quickly as you can, that would be helpful. Ideally, we'd like to have it back before we break for Christmas. Getting it translated and circulated would be really helpful.

Thank you to all of you for being here and for joining us today. If you'd like to leave the in-person meeting or drop off from online, you're more than welcome to do that.

For the members, we'll now have a vote on the estimates.

ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LIMITED Vote 1b—Payments to the corporation for operating and capital expenditures..........$151,471,268

(Vote 1b agreed to on division)

CANADIAN ENERGY REGULATOR Vote 1b—Program expenditures..........$2,924,280

(Vote 1b agreed to on division)

CANADIAN NUCLEAR SAFETY COMMISSION Vote 1b—Program expenditures..........$5,696,447

(Vote 1b agreed to on division)

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES Vote 1b—Operating expenditures..........$45,989,393 Vote 5b—Capital expenditures..........$5,001,000 Vote 10b—Grants and contributions..........$253,402,069

(Votes 1b, 5b and 10b agreed to on division)

Shall I report the votes on the supplementary estimates (B), 2022-23 to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Okay, we're good.

With that, folks, we've concluded today's study of supplementary estimates (B), 2022-23.

Right now, we're scheduled to have our next meeting on December 6, to start reviewing the draft report for the study of creating a fair and equitable Canadian energy transformation, if it can be distributed with sufficient time for members to review beforehand. I'll be looking to see if we have it tomorrow or if we can get it out first thing on Monday. If it's beyond noon on Monday, then we'll likely have to cancel the Tuesday meeting. We'll see how quickly we can get it to you. Watch for the notice of meeting that we'll get out at some point on Monday and watch for the draft report.

I look forward to seeing everybody. Have a safe weekend.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.