Natural Resources committee  Roughly 1,700 square feet. It's a $200,000 home we use for a base price, for an average price. It might be higher nowadays, depending on where you are in the market. But if you were to look at that as an opportunity and if you could have a GST abatement of 7% on the installation, hypothetically, you'd have total cost recovery.

Natural Resources committee  In part it is a market issue, where granite countertops are more important than an energy efficient house. When a builder builds the house, he generally doesn't promote that. I live in Barrhaven, in Ottawa—and some of us know that Barrhaven is growing into what some say is a sprawling community—and we have builders putting up homes faster than you can shake a stick at.

Natural Resources committee  As suggested, some incentives could include what we see in Ontario right now. Again, this is going back to a provincial jurisdiction, but they have the standard offer program, which is a feed-in tariff, and you have individual homeowners who are able to place or install photovoltaic panels in their rooftop, tap into the grid, and feed into the grid the excess energy they produce.

Natural Resources committee  That was an illustration. That's a U.S. home.

Natural Resources committee  Again, this is averaged out over the year where the home will be drawing or producing a net amount of energy over the year, and that's the whole thing. There are times the house will have to draw more energy than it would produce, and that's the beauty of net-zero energy. You can pull from the grid when you need to or you can send back to the grid when you have to or can.

Natural Resources committee  I think it would all complement the goal of reaching net-zero energy. It's not competitive in our approach; rather it's enabling the tools to get to net zero and remembering that net-zero energy homes represent the path to net zero. I say that because if we have targets for solar and for geoexchange systems and we have targets for other on-site generation, these will all be tools to allow the builder to consider for his or her marketplace what will sell.

Natural Resources committee  If you're talking nationally, we're in the process of trying to do that right now. We're not in a position to give you a precise request for each province. We can provide a general framework of what we're asking for at the federal level. We're doing more work in Ontario, and we're doing some work in Alberta now.

Natural Resources committee  I don't want to pre-empt what we have. We just finished a major study, two net-zero energy home forums in Ontario. It brought an interesting perspective from builders and stakeholders in that province. It was quite comprehensive. We're just finishing a report that we're going to submit to the Ontario Power Authority, and we're still in the draft stage.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, in 2005 we suggested it.

Natural Resources committee  That's true for new residential construction, yes. For the retrofit market, there is some support. In fact, geoexchange units could be put in the retrofit market, and are subsidized to a certain degree with incentive, but not in the new residential marketplace.

Natural Resources committee  I know there are some municipalities—In Ottawa here, there's a review right now in consideration.

Natural Resources committee  I would suggest there's probably a lot of that. From the on-site generation perspective, there's a lot that's imported currently. But that being said, from the builder product point of view, there's a lot that's Canadian. There is a tremendous amount of Canadian talent, more importantly, and labour supply to do this kind of home.

Natural Resources committee  We suggested the GST abatement a while back.

Natural Resources committee  Well, understandably, we're at a stage where we're still learning. CMHC, to its credit, has helped bring this to the forefront now at a level at which we are not only going to learn from but at which we can demonstrate that this can happen. I think part of the challenge back in 2005 was whether this could happen.

Natural Resources committee  Sorry, just to add to that, there was one point. Tax instruments are not new. Mind you, it is a moderate amount. The provincial sales tax rebate exists right now on solar panels, for example, but it's nominal.