Finance committee  Thank you for your question. That's not the intention. The intention is to just update the act. This part of the act, section 26 of the Energy Efficiency Act, was put in place before the regulatory process that's now directed through a cabinet directive through Treasury Board,

Finance committee  The cabinet directive is a directive that's published through the cabinet and implemented by the Treasury Board and the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Finance committee  It's not a statutory requirement, but it does govern how departments operate when they're doing changes to regulations, and it is public.

Finance committee  Effectively, yes. What I would say is that the cabinet directive is a long-standing directive. It's been in place for a number of years, and it's what governs departments in all the regulations that they do. My understanding is that there aren't that many pieces of legislation

Finance committee  It would have to be through a cabinet process, which I think would be led by Treasury Board. There's a process that occurs, and then the directive is a public document.

Finance committee  Sure. There is a very robust process of pre-consultation that we would do with our stakeholders and with provinces and territories anyway. We have very effective relationships. We talk to our stakeholders and we consult Canadians and the provinces and territories when we're makin

Environment committee  Sure. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here on behalf of the Department of Natural Resources. Frank DesRosiers will join us shortly. He apparently is held up in traffic, so I will present the deck. Some of this is in Frank's area more than mine, but I'm happy to at le

Environment committee  Yes, we are. What I can do is describe a little bit of the process that is used for building codes. There's a very structured and consensus-based process that exists. The National Research Council is actually the secretariat for that. It supports a number of technical committee

Environment committee  It does, yes. The building code has a housing component to it, and it also covers commercial and institutional buildings.

Environment committee  I'd say two things. Building codes have obviously been advancing for several years now. My understanding is that there's a new code expected to come out this spring. There's also 2011 and 2015. The codes work on a five-year cycle. Under the pan-Canadian framework, what's being

Environment committee  I'm sure we do. I don't have those numbers off the top of my head, I'm afraid.

Environment committee  I just want to go back to your last question briefly. Were you asking for how much better buildings would have to be to reach net-zero energy?

Environment committee  Right, so it's in the range of 60%, I think. I'll verify that number, but currently under energy star, you can already build your home 20% better, and under R-2000, 50% better, so this is another significant step forward on that.

Environment committee  I will speak broadly, and then I'll turn it over to Frank, because R and D is really his specialty. In terms of building envelopes, heating and cooling, and windows, these are the key areas for us in this respect, because those can make major advances. Things like heat exchange p

Environment committee  What I would say is that in my office we've met several times with Passive House Canada. We're very supportive of their work, because they are advancing energy efficiency goals within houses. That's certainly one of the very high stringent standards that can be looked at. There a