Environment committee  I'm ready to go.

Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Is the sound good?

Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm pleased to be here on behalf of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. CMHC is Canada's national housing agency, and our mission is to help Canadians meet their housing needs. Many know us through our housing finance initiatives—CMHC has been arou

Environment committee  The mortgage loan insurance refund program has existed since 2010 for the MURBs, I believe, and since in 2012 for the single-family homes. Essentially, CMHC offers up to a 25% refund based on the level of energy performance in new builds and retrofits for energy performance. We c

Environment committee  I can provide you with an indication of uptake. For the multi-unit sector, since 2010 through the early days of 2018, the number of apartment buildings—we call them files—that have been through amounts to 181 projects, and we've refunded close to $7 million. This is across abou

Environment committee  Certainly.

Environment committee  Are you referring to the number of houses constructed each year or the total population of the dwelling units?

Environment committee  Yes, we certainly have that information. In terms of the number of units that are constructed and on the market now, we can include that to provide perspective to the figures that we can give you on the mortgage loan insurance refund project, just to provide perspective to the i

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  On that relationship and what the CMHC uses currently, we spring off a number of different energy efficiency programs that are out there, such as BuiltGreen Alberta and R-2000. We've done the equivalencies between some of the commercial energy efficiency programs and the EnerGuid

Environment committee  We largely work through the lending organizations. The lenders, when you're going to get your mortgage loan insurance, would say that you're buying a Landmark home and ask you if you know that they're net-zero ready or some level of performance on the EnerGuide rating scale. The

Environment committee  We have moved on raising our energy efficiency standards, largely because the code is moving, as I think this committee is aware, in terms of energy efficiency. We float above it, and—

Environment committee  Yes, but we find that our float point is appropriate for trying to attract people into the market as willing participants without scaring them away. Now, it's interesting that you raise this issue of performance. Under the national housing strategy, and particularly through the

Environment committee  I can't speak to the prioritization for the mortgage loan insurance refund project, but certainly for the funding that's coming forward on the national housing strategy, we're going to make an effort to make sure we get regional impacts so that we don't lose the small providers.

Environment committee  We realize that regions are different. They have different priorities and different challenges. We'll be there for them.