Transport Committee on May 30th, 2023

[Michael Gordon]

Thank you, Rita. I can add to that.

I would say, for example, let's not take two steps back before we can take a step forward. When we look at hydrogen, that's another form of fuel. We have 57,000 capable and able-bodied people here in Canada who specialize in that type of equipment as far as the fuels industry is concerned. To be able to retrain, they just have to adjust to the different characteristics of that fuel. They would have decades of experience to be able to move forward, and they would carry that experience and provide value.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Gordon and Ms. Rahmati. I appreciate it. I have a lot more questions for you, but I am going to move on.

Mr. Lee, with regard to the cost of housing, we know it to be true that nine out of 10 young adults don't believe that they will ever be able to afford a home here in Canada. You mentioned unintended risks and consequences. As we change and adapt for climate change, specifically for homes, and knowing that the price of a home and the lack of homes are driving up costs, what exactly are those unintended risks, and how do you believe they will directly affect a young adult purchasing a home and starting a family?

[Kevin Lee]

The house operates as a system, so when you make certain changes to it.... For example, an easy one that people would understand is when you tighten a home for airtightness, you need to add ventilation. You put in heat recovery so that you still have fresh air, but now you have a more energy-efficient home. But if you thought you were just going to tighten your home without adding that, then you create unintended consequences, such as health issues.

The same holds true for many other things. For example, adding more insulation in airtightness is good for extreme heat, but only if you have air conditioning. It helps your air conditioner be more efficient. What we're seeing with super efficient homes—we have a net-zero energy council; we've labelled over 1,200 net-zero homes in Canada and we're working hard to get this right—is that super energy-efficient homes can also overheat more easily, so you have to adjust. You have to create overhangs. You probably have to put in air conditioning and those types of things.

There are other things you do to prevent fire. There are issues in western Canada with what's called “attic rain”, where one municipality creating a bylaw to stop one thing resulted in another issue.

You need to make sure your co-changes are really well thought through. You do your cross-disciplinary work, so that your house continues to work as intended.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Next, we'll go to Mr. Chahal.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for joining us this morning.

I'm going to start off with Mr. Lee.

Mr. Lee, you talk a lot about housing affordability. You actually mentioned the hailstorm in Calgary. That happened in my constituency. We've seen a number of extreme weather events like hail over a four- or five-year period. That last one did close to $1.5 billion in damage and damaged 35,000 homes.

You talked about building codes specifically. What engagement has the Canadian Home Builders' Association had regionally with your provincial counterparts—the Alberta municipal affairs—to look at potentially changing building codes in hailstorm alley, where a community like mine was devastated with extreme damage through hail, with asphalt roofs blown off or damaged because they didn't withstand the hail?

Have you had conversations with your provincial counterparts to look at more resilient roofing opportunities?

[Kevin Lee]

Yes. We're heavily engaged in the national building code process. Our association is at three levels—local, provincial and national. Of course, there's a move right now towards harmonization with the national building code, which offers opportunities. The national building code does break things down regionally according to different climate zones and the different weather events that can occur.

Exactly how you deal with things like the changing climate becomes more of a challenge. Historically, the building code has been based on historical data. Now, we need to move towards a building code that is going to deal with the climate of the future. There's some ongoing work with respect to that. You then have to find the right balance of how much you change the building code while keeping things affordable. That's a tricky balance because, for example, the insurance industry is seeing losses. That's not good, but by the same token, how much do you want to increase the cost of housing? You need the right solutions. It's part of the reason why we need more innovation.

We also have existing homes. We have 16 million existing homes. How do you find that right balance? We're heavily engaged with industry players to find the right solutions.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Mr. Lee, the City of Calgary was recently recognized for having a roofing rebate program. They had asked the provincial government for support to make sure those homes could be repaired with resilient roofing.

Do you think there should be incentives provided in a region like southern Alberta where hail does extreme damage? I think Fort Collins in Colorado mandated resilient roofs. Do you think that building codes should mandate resilient roofs in that region? Should government also provide incentives to help homeowners install those buildings' roofs to make sure that housing affordability is still maintained?

[Kevin Lee]

I do think the idea of providing incentives where you have regionally specific climate events makes a lot of sense, because that will also help address the existing housing stock, which is so critical. We're talking about trying to double housing starts, so hopefully we'll add more, but on average we add only 200,000 homes a year to the housing stock. We have 16 million existing units in Canada.

We can find ways to help make it more affordable for Canadians to adapt to climate change—as in your example of how we help subsidize part of the cost—but it's not only that. Not only do subsidies help people afford it, but they also create education that encourages people to go ahead and do something they might not otherwise do. In turn, that can increase energy efficiency when it's energy efficiency stuff, or it can prevent losses in the future by making sure that when they go to change their roof, although they could have just done regular shingles, they do something that's more hail-resistant. That's a win-win for everybody.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you.

I want to go to Ms. Eyquem.

Ms. Eyquem, you talked significantly about resiliency and the economic benefits. I want to talk a little bit about data sharing. Is your organization working with provinces and municipalities to share the data you have—I would say, the troves of data that Intact has—to look at which areas infrastructure expenditures should be focused on, whether it is on housing or larger-scale infrastructure, to prevent extreme damage? What conversations have you had on bringing forward opportunities for homeowners so they could save on insurance costs?

[Joanna Eyquem]

To clarify, I don't work for Intact Financial Corporation. I work for the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, which is at the University of Waterloo. We do not have insurers' data. That is Intact's data.

I know that examination of insurance data and the kind of mapping that is held privately have gone into the high-risk insurance pool study that is being undertaken by Public Safety Canada. There are definitely 1.5 million homes in high-risk flood areas, for example, which is 10% of the housing stock. The government has the data already of where to focus on flood resilience.

In terms of helping residents to reduce their claims, the Intact centre has several infographics looking at exactly what people can do to increase their flood resilience, wildfire resilience and—just released a couple of weeks ago—extreme heat resilience. Those are all freely available online, and we would like the government and municipalities to disseminate that information to the public.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

We have a big challenge—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Chahal. Unfortunately, the time is up for this round, sir.

I now give the floor to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today for this important study on the impact of climate change on our infrastructure, but especially on how we can adapt to it. I think that's the most important thing.

I would like to start with Mr. Dupuis, from Saint-Ours.

Earlier, you mentioned that there used to be ice bridges during the winter and that there are no longer any today. Could you tell us more about the effects that the disappearance of an ice bridge can have on a daily basis for an average citizen, or more particularly for the people in your region?

Let's start with that question.

[Sylvain Dupuis]

The biggest downside is detours. In reality, in order to have access to the other side, people have to travel a detour of about 30 kilometres.

It is also important to understand that this has an impact on economic development. People often live on our side of the river and work at ArcelorMittal or Rio Tinto. The absence of ice bridges makes the entire south shore of the Richelieu River less attractive to people on the other side of the river.

In 2008, the ice bridge functioned incredibly well because the river was frozen. 10 years later, we have started to see the real impact of climate change. The river almost doesn't freeze anymore, so it has become dangerous. Ice bridges are no longer an option in terms of transportation.

There are also all the related services. It should be noted that we are largely a rural area, so people are often isolated. For example, there is a grocery store on one shore but not on the other, and the same goes for the pharmacy. Obviously, each city and village specialized according to land occupancy. When there was an ice bridge, in addition to the ferries during the summer, we were something of a large community. Now, that community has been cut in half.

That is why it is important to connect the two shores through another road link.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Dupuis, has there been no ice bridge in Saint-Ours since 2009?

[Sylvain Dupuis]

In 2009, the current was already causing us a problem. So we no longer have an ice bridge in Saint-Ours.

We had an effective ice bridge in Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, which is the neighbouring village of Saint-Ours. It was very well managed. The Quebec department of transport even authorized it. However, frost and thaw cycles and ice melting too quickly, sometimes within three days, have made the situation dangerous. It was at that point that we abandoned that winter infrastructure.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

If I remember correctly, there have been no ice bridges at all anywhere on the Richelieu River since 2014 or 2015. It is important to understand that there were also ice bridges in other places. I imagine that this is still a relatively new phenomenon that can have economic repercussions. As you mentioned, people who live on a shore may review their life choices in light of this new reality.

That said, there is a federal infrastructure that you would like to be able to use, the dam on the Richelieu River. What responses have you received so far about your project to transform this dam so that it can serve as a bridge?

[Sylvain Dupuis]

It should be noted that, in 1982, the Conservative government anticipated the blow by building the foundations of this dam so that the infrastructure could be used as a road bridge. Obviously, for budgetary reasons, only a kind of transportation slab was set up.

The dam belongs to the federal government. Half of the bridge is already built, so it would just be a matter of continuing the work. It would be fairly simple and the costs would not be astronomical. That would help a lot with travel, but it would also help with infrastructure, clearly.

Of course, a whole range of departments and agencies are involved: Parks Canada, the authorities responsible for locks, probably Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in addition to the departments responsible for infrastructure and transportation. That is where Canada's leadership needs to come in. Otherwise, we are entering into something of mess and we no longer know which door to knock on to create a project that, in reality, is motivating for the region, but also for the rest of Quebec. Federal leadership is essential to making this project a reality.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I want to come back to the issue of ferries. There are no more ice bridges, but ferries will be operating in the summer.

Are there alternatives, such as a winter ferry, that would enable people to cross in the winter despite the presence of ice without having to use a bridge?

[Sylvain Dupuis]

The danger of winter ferries is ice. Even if the river does not freeze, there is ice coming from Lake Champlain, often without warning. It is dangerous for a ferry to go aground, especially when vehicles are on board.

Some projects exist, but it is complicated. This is considered marine transportation, so managing such a service is quite difficult.

In terms of the bridge, the infrastructure is there. All it takes is the will of the government to complete the project. It could be a great tripartite project to which the municipalities and regions, the provincial government and the federal government would contribute.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Today's study is obviously about adapting infrastructure to climate change, but also about adapting government programs, especially those of the federal government.

In your opinion, are there any federal programs under which your municipality could apply for assistance and support in order to find solutions for the winter ferry, for example, or for the project to extend the dam to make it a complete bridge between the two shores?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have about 15 seconds to answer, Mr. Dupuis.

[Sylvain Dupuis]

The difficulty is always the same: It's a matter of knowing where to go to get access to these grants. Municipalities are not familiar with the programs that exist, and that's one of the reasons I'm here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Next, we have Ms. Zarrillo.

Ms. Zarrillo, the floor is yours, and you have six minutes.