Environment committee  I'm not a code expert, but I think the code cycles need to be faster. It's not only that the federal government finishes the code. It's then the adoption by the provinces, of course. That can result in long delays. In a way, the code could be a very good tool, but time is against us.

Environment committee  Retrofit, very well. These four areas are actually established practices in the industry. We rank them in terms of the percentage of buildings, or the number of buildings, that need to pursue these practices. In the next slide, you'll see where these buildings are located. It is really important that it's not just a discussion about energy, but that it's also a discussion about carbon.

Environment committee  Exactly. You're right. These are not priorities. These are four strategies that need to be applied to all buildings. It depends on the building and where the building is located. If you're in Quebec, fuel switching makes a lot of sense because you have clean electricity. In Alberta, fuel switching doesn't make a lot of sense because you have a dirty grid that still uses coal to generate electricity.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question.

Environment committee  I have two slides with four areas there. Is it with regard to the retrofit, or zero carbon?

Environment committee  That's a really good question. The Canada Green Building Council is in the business of setting higher thresholds and driving this forward. I'll go back to when the council started 15 years ago and what happened then. There are three areas. One is that you're in charge of the code, but we have to keep in mind that the code is back-loaded.

Environment committee  Please do. I would appreciate that.

Environment committee  I can tell you that if it's a Mueller doing it, it will be done right.

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you for inviting me to come to the committee. I would like to provide an overview from our council's perspective on how green buildings can help Canada achieve its GHG commitments and climate change commitments. There's a common understanding now in Canada and around the world that 30% of greenhouse gas emissions are associated with buildings—building construction and operation—and that also applies to Canada.

Finance committee  I think what we're asking for in the real estate sector, particularly in the building industry.... It is a longer game. It requires constant investment. What we are really asking for, as an example, in funding of the federal government buildings portfolio, is that it will be given consideration, so that the federal government building portfolio can move towards low-carbon or zero-carbon buildings, and so key assets in the federal government building portfolio can be retrofitted.

Finance committee  Currently, we are having several meetings with the Treasury Board Secretariat, Public Works and Procurement Canada, as well as with DND. I can speak only on the building side, but I think you can also extend it to transportation and other areas. I think the federal government has tremendous opportunities through procurement to drive innovation in the Canadian marketplace.

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. It's a really important one. The previous government had the ecoENERGY program, which wasn't shown to be particularly effective in getting homeowners to reduce energy use on a large scale. I think there is an opportunity for this government to look at what mechanisms exist to finance retrofit in the home sector, because it's very consumer-driven.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting me to speak to the finance committee today. My presentation will be about the role of the building sector in a low-carbon economy and how the Government of Canada could consider activities in its 2018 budget. We know that Canada can build a low-carbon economy and reach its 30% reduction target from the building sector by 2030 by focusing on three initiatives.

Natural Resources committee  Again, it's a really good question. I'm not an expert in wood buildings, but I've been around enough of them and seen enough of them to have an opinion on them. I think that in terms of fire ratings, these mass timber buildings actually rate quite well. They rate as well as steel and concrete buildings.

Natural Resources committee  It's just a matter of accounting. Typically, even if you look at the pie chart from Environment Canada, they have divided the pie from a more regulatory perspective, the point sources they can regulate in terms of air pollution and those types of things. We take it more from the perspective of the end use.