Environment committee  It's interesting. It all comes down to.... A lot of the renovations I'm talking about are buildings where the homeowner actually wants to tear the place down. Then they go to the municipality, and the municipality says, “Oh, no. You can't tear that old building down. You have to

Environment committee  I believe that in Europe, there was a niche community, just like we have, mostly of custom homes. People were voluntarily looking for these products. The companies developed the technology to produce these products. The government then mandated a progressive increase in energy ef

Environment committee  I absolutely believe that's the case, although it needs to be done in steps and to be phased in. We just won't have the production of those components if we choose to do it....

Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  There's almost no cost. In Canada, we have extremely high snow loads. For example, a roof is typically built to hold up 50 pounds per square foot, or something like that. That's the amount of weight that is required. Solar panels are three to five PSF, so you're talking about, at

Environment committee  Absolutely.

Environment committee  Some can and some can't. It's very dependent on the building. The cost of renovation might be 10:1 versus the cost of doing it right to begin with. If we could just add that in, it's a very simple item, and boom, we would an entire fleet of houses ready for solar.

Environment committee  It's definitely more challenging. Yes, we are sourcing stuff from all over the world. Luckily we have the web, so we basically go online and find the best products in the world and then track down a way to get them into the country. Right now it is mostly through intermediaries,

Environment committee  A number of them have been attempted here in the region, and every one has not been a success. The costs have been more than that of starting over. When we're talking renovations, there are two types: major renovations where you're going down to the studs and things like this.

Environment committee  It's HRV.

Environment committee  It is, but there are problems with it. A lot of it, especially in the built environment, has to do with service and maintenance and such things. For example, in the case of windows, a local manufacturer can send you a replacement window sash in a matter of days, in contrast to ou

Environment committee  I absolutely believe that if we raise the standards on these items, we'll get better products at similar prices to what we're already getting. That's the bottom line. There are going to be increases as we move on in certain things. For example, HRVs are now required in homes, but

Environment committee  Just as a point of clarification, I'm talking about high-performance windows for custom homes, which is very different from a budget window for a place in—

Environment committee  That's right.

Environment committee  I do indeed.