Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue No. 30 - Evidence - September 21, 2017
OTTAWA, Thursday, September 21, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:04 a.m. to study the effects of transitioning to a low carbon economy.
Senator Richard Neufeld (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. My name is Richard Neufeld. I'm honoured to be chair of this committee, and I am a senator from British Columbia.
I wish to welcome all those who are with us today in the room, and viewers across the country who will be watching on television or online. As a reminder to those watching, these committee hearings are open to the public and also available online at the new Senate website, sencanada.ca. All other committee-related business can also be found online, including past reports, bills, studies and lists of witnesses.
I would now ask senators around the table to introduce themselves. I will begin by introducing, on my right, Senator Paul Massicotte, from Quebec.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald from Nova Scotia.
Senator Fraser: Joan Fraser from Quebec.
Senator Black: Douglas Black from Alberta.
Senator Dean: Tony Dean from Ontario.
Senator Patterson: Dennis Patterson from Nunavut.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Griffin: Diane Griffin, Prince Edward Island.
The Chair: I would also like to introduce our staff, beginning with our clerk, Lynn Gordon, on my left, and our Library of Parliament analysts, Marc LeBlanc and Sam Banks.
In March 2016, the Senate mandated our committee to embark on an in-depth study on the effects, challenges and costs of transitioning to a lower-carbon economy. The Government of Canada has pledged to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a big undertaking.
Our committee has taken a sector-by-sector approach to this study. We will study five sectors of the Canadian economy which are responsible for over 80 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. They are electricity, transportation, oil and gas, emission-intensive trade-exposed industries, and buildings. Our first interim report, on the electricity sector, was released on March 7, and our second one, on the transportation sector, was released on June 22.
Today, for the forty-seventh meeting of our current study, I'm pleased to welcome, from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Duncan Hill, Manager, Housing Needs Research.
Thank you for joining us this morning. Please proceed with your opening remarks — I know you've circulated those this morning — then we'll have some questions.
Duncan Hill, Manager, Housing Needs Research, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to be here on behalf of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and delighted to be available to take your questions as they come.
As a federal Crown corporation, Canada's national housing agency, CMHC's mission is to help Canadians meet their housing needs. We do this in three it ways.
First, CMHC's housing finance activities, such as mortgage loan insurance and securitization, contribute to the stability of housing markets and Canada's financial system. Our commercial programs serve all parts of the country and support all forms of housing, including home ownership and large multi-unit rental buildings.
CMHC also works with the provinces and territories, First Nations communities, municipalities and other housing stakeholders to support low-income households and others whose housing needs are not met in the marketplace.
Third, CMHC helps Canadians meet their housing needs by providing market analysis, information and research, which is where I come from, and helps businesses and governments and the public make informed decisions about housing. In fact, CMHC is known to be one of the most comprehensive and trusted sources of housing information and markets in Canada.
It is this part of CMHC's mission, the last that I mentioned, that I am here to speak to today: CMHC's support for research, demonstrations and knowledge transfer on healthy, energy-efficient, environmentally responsible, affordable housing in all regions. This is a very top-of-mind issue for all Canadians. We've heard this. Last year we led an extensive national consultation process to inform the development of Canada's first-ever National Housing Strategy. It was documented in the What We Heard report, which is available online.
The need for sustainable housing in communities was a central theme of the consultations. In fact, over 80 per cent of Canadians who responded to the online survey spoke to the need for the National Housing Strategy to address Canada's contributions to climate change goals.
CMHC has extensive experience in this regard. Over the past several decades, in partnership with Natural Resources Canada and the National Research Council, primarily, we have focused significant research funding on improving the performance of housing, from single-family homes to high-rise apartment and condominium buildings. CMHC's approach has always been multi-dimensional and holistic. We recognize that energy efficiency should not come at the expense of indoor air quality, and transit-oriented communities should also be walkable and safe places to live.
Our approach has also focused on translating knowledge into action. CMHC's research projects have been mined extensively for information that has been used to create best practice guides for residential construction, guidelines for solving common housing problems and challenges, consumer information products, fact sheets for energy-efficient design, construction and renovations and case studies to share the lessons learned and knowledge gained from across the sector.
CMHC has also successfully used demonstrations as a vehicle to advance innovation in housing.
Reaching back into the 1990s, our Healthy Housing Demonstration projects — one project was publicized in the Toronto Star just this week — were the first to advance the idea that we can meet multiple and sometimes competing objectives in housing, such as occupant health, energy efficiency, resource efficiency, environmental responsibility and, of course, affordability.
CMHC's FlexHousing demonstration has been used to assess and promote housing designs that can be easily and cost effectively adapted to meet life's changing needs.
Most recently, our EQuilibrium Sustainable Housing and Communities demonstration initiatives demonstrated, in collaboration with inspired industry members, Canada's housing sector's capacity to design and deliver highly efficient housing forms.
Those two programs were delivered in partnership with Natural Resources Canada.
It is this initiative — EQuilibrium — that helped to inform the sector that net-zero-energy housing is technically and financially achievable with commercially available materials, equipment and systems. The response has been rewarding in that there are now several net-zero-energy home-building initiatives under way across the country.
Mr. Chair, I hope my overview has helped to frame how CMHC has contributed to energy-efficient, environmentally friendly housing. Moving forward, we will continue with our holistic approach, in partnership with other federal departments, the provinces and territories and our housing stakeholders, so that federal support for affordable housing also contributes to our other priorities, including addressing climate change. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd be pleased to answer any questions the committee might have at this time.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We'll begin with the deputy chair.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you, Mr. Hill, for being with us this morning. I often read your reports, predominantly regarding housing numbers and so on, just to find out what's happening across Canada. I think we all can acknowledge that, within 10 years, because of demographics, largely, there's been a significant increase of urban housing — highrise condos and so on — across most cities across North America. In spite of our knowledge, in spite of technology, which allows for greater efficiency in homes, if you look at what's being built, it looks like we haven't adopted completely the knowledge we've gained. In other words, you still see a lot of highrises with a high percentage of glazing that is a 3, 4, max 6 R factor. How do you explain that? We have all this knowledge, all this narrative about energy efficiency, and yet you see what's being built. The consumer, maybe rightfully so, is always very concerned about aesthetics, very concerned about the scenery he sees. Therefore, you see a lot of glass glazing, probably more so than even 20 years ago. Any comments on that?
Mr. Hill: Yes. I can't point to a study that has looked at the evolution of housing and how the different housing forms have evolved in terms of their energy efficiency, but, if you look at where the vast majority of the population of Canada resides, single family homes, it's about a 70, 65 per cent split, versus 35, 30 per cent on the multi-unit residential side. There was an emphasis early on in research development and even incentive programs to move the single family home stock to higher performance than the multi-family stock. There was a division, even in the building code. The single family homes and the low-rise wood-frame stuff are all built under Part 9 of the National Building Code, which is very prescriptive. It provides great guidance for builders on what to do and how, versus the highrise stock and multi-unit residential buildings generically, which are under Part 3 of the National Building Code. It's more objective-based. It relies on the expertise of the builders, developers, architects and engineers to get it right, but within the context of the code.
Over the years, you could understand where the focus was. We could have more impact with single family homes just because there were more of them. I'd say that, over the last few years, the industry has recognized the problems with building glass towers in a climate such as Canada's. You've seen the rather — I wouldn't say aggressive, but carefully modulated changes with the introduction of the Model National Energy Code for Buildings, which speaks to these Part 3 highrise towers. They're starting to put requirements out there that are being adopted by the provinces in various shapes and forms around issues like you just spoke of, the window-to-wall ratio. So they're beginning to restrict how much glass you can get away with in a building. There is change there, and it's happening. Provinces are picking up on it. They're coming up with climate-appropriate, specific recommendations for everything from window- to-wall areas to how much insulation has to go into the walls, the efficiency of mechanical and electrical systems. All I can say is they're catching up. Yes, I would say that there was a delay in getting there. How it happened I couldn't categorically say, except for some of the inferences I made in my comments.
Senator Massicotte: I visited a new building. It's underground for two, three months. Still a high percentage of glazing.
Mr. Hill: Yes.
Senator Massicotte: A little bit insulated panels, but 60 per cent glazing.
I hope we respond to climate change adequately enough, but sometimes it's difficult to be optimistic. Therefore, we have to really deal with the mitigation aspect. I hope we get there, but there's a real risk we won't. You look at the tornadoes in the Caribbean and so on and say, "Wow.'' We talk about energy efficiency, but I presume that in the code we're also worried about the structural, if you wish, capacity of our buildings, including the single family homes, because we are going to have a greater level of storms. We'll have a greater level of winds. We'll have a lot more rain. How are we doing in that respect? How resilient is the new stock relative to those variations?
Mr. Hill: If you read Insurance Bureau of Canada reports, you'll find that they say that water is the new fire. They used to be primarily concerned with fire emergencies in buildings in terms of impact and losses of life. Of course, flooding and water are a bigger concern. If you look at the numbers of where costs are being incurred, even in Canada, it tends to be flooding, whether it comes from backflow through sewers, overland, falling from the sky, rivers as we've seen in the spring in many places in Canada. I would say at least it's catching the attention of the industry, and we've certainly seen, on the hurricane side, as you mentioned earlier, greater attention being paid in code requirements for tie-down straps on roof rafters and things like that. When disaster strikes, I find that industry and codes react. We've seen it happen in Canada a few times, particularly in high winds, and we're seeing it now in terms of people beginning to consciously wonder about development patterns and whether or not we should be building on flood plains. Can we map these things accurately so that we can at least be aware of where developments are going and inform developers and municipalities? You're seeing a lot of talk about that right now in the paper and action. Flood plain mapping and understanding the resilience of the housing system and all of infrastructure are catching a lot of attention. We see it from the North all the way through to the municipalities in the South.
Senator Massicotte: I hope so. There's a fellow — I won't name him, but he was in the paper in Montreal recently. His father built most of the luxury condos in Montreal, very high quality. His son now lives in St. Martin in the Caribbean. Two weeks ago, he was bragging about the fact that he built 12 homes. He says, "They're built to Canadian standards, so don't worry. Everything is okay.'' Every one of his roofs came off during the storm. Maybe it's the Canadian code that has a deficiency in roofs. I'm not so sure, but I think it's a lesson for all of us.
Mr. Hill: Has the National Research Council, the Canadian codes commission, appeared before the committee? Because it's certainly a good question. They can speak to the evolution of the codes in detail, on climate change resiliency, energy efficiency and the evolution over the last 20, 30 years. I think they would be able to speak to the ramp-up, particularly on the energy-efficiency side, through the development of the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings, of the progress that's being made.
I'm optimistic. I think everybody has that 30 per cent reduction by 2030 in mind. I've been around for 20 years. Even in the last 10 years, when we started EQuilibrium and started talking about net zero, that was a faraway concept that people shouldn't be wasting their time on. Now that we see commercially available programs out there delivering net-zero-energy homes, it's inspiring. On the multi-unit front, the same thing. I'm very aware that, in Toronto, we've got close to 1,000 towers with R 5 insulation in the walls and single-pane aluminum windows. You just kind of think, "How did that ever happen?'' But they were built in the 1960s and 1970s when energy was fairly inexpensive, and the priority was getting units up to respond to a growing population. But now, with the changing codes and voluntary standards out there, with the Canada Green Building Council, the sustainable building council of Canada, there are a number of things going on that are pushing even the multi-unit residential sector to build better. Through the voluntary programs, there's a carrot. Of course, the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings is a bit of the stick that's following up and raising the bar on conventional construction. The language that's being used for targets and environmental targets I find is encouraging and certainly more so than it was five or ten years ago.
Senator Seidman: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Hill.
I'd like to ask you about some information that came out in the Let's Talk Housing consultation, that four-month- long consultation. I'm not sure if that's the one you were referring to. It very clearly identified that CMHC has a legislated mandate to conduct research on housing conditions and has been the backbone of housing research in Canada. But the feedback that was summarized in the report identified environmental sustainability as a housing priority for Canadians when considered together with fiscal sustainability and housing affordability. But the consultation report also notes that the relative cost and benefit of adopting sustainable housing practices, technologies and design is not well understood, especially in relation to achieving socio-economic and climate change goals. The report described opportunities identified by participants to provide funding for sustainable housing in the form of flexible financing, tax rebates, including lower mortgage rates for purchasers of new homes meeting increasing levels of energy efficiency, and longer amortization periods on buildings that use sustainable, long-life materials.
Could you speak to us about the knowledge gaps in understanding the costs and benefits of environmentally sustainable housing and how CMHC intends to fill those gaps?
Mr. Hill: Thank you for the question. The knowledge gaps are varied in the industry.
One thing I will speak to is the single-family low-rise stock. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Natural Resources Canada's EnerGuide program for houses. It was a program that ran for many years. It still exists as a framework for measuring the energy efficiency of houses, but for many years it provided incentives directly to Canadians to improve the performance of their existing homes and also to buy more energy-efficient homes by providing a rating number and giving them an idea of the best place to put their money in terms of insulation, mechanical and electrical systems, furnaces and lighting in their houses and incented them through a scale of dollars for kilowatts saved.
The result of that program and the great database they were able to accumulate over that 10-year period have closed the knowledge gap on single-family homes about where to put money and effort in order to have maximum effect. Kudos to NRCan for their program, keeping track of their data, using it wisely and continuing to invest in the program. It has provided a plethora of well-informed policy advice to government and the private sector and code development on the cost-benefit of energy efficiency in low-rise housing.
Now, back to the Part 3 multi-unit residential stock, we have far less information on that stock. In fact, we're just starting to fill that knowledge gap in terms of characterizing the stock in Canada: how many apartment buildings there are, how old, how many storeys, how many units, their construction characteristics and how much energy they use. This is information we're just starting to gather in a collective way. Without that baseline, it's been very difficult to say where we are today and where we need to get to tomorrow. Most of the studies CMHC has been doing over the last 10 to 20 years in the multi-unit stock have been more anecdotal. We've looked at case studies of buildings that have gone through energy-efficiency measures, looked at the performance before and after and said that's great. But we've never been able to project it to a broader stock to do a broader analysis and get the analytics necessary to say in this class of buildings, this makes the most sense to do, add insulation to the roofs, add windows or get to the boiler systems. We're not there yet on the multi-unit stock, but we are moving. There is a collective effort between government departments to fill knowledge gaps on housing. It is a key point of the National Housing Strategy. We know we will have to track what we do over time. Filling the data gaps on the stock is a key point in anything we do moving forward.
On the multi-stock, we still are a bit hampered in terms of being able to, with great certainty, provide very narrow, low-margin-of-error guesstimates on if you put this much into your building you will save this much, so your payback period will be x over time. The diversity of the stock is huge. We're talking about everything from small wood-frame walk-ups in Montreal that are 60 to 70 years old, and there are 120,000 of those, through to the high-rise towers in Toronto, close to 2,000 towers in the GTA alone. Trying to pin down what is best in terms of measures has been very challenging. That's why CMHC has been taking the approach that where we can find property owners to work with, the public housing providers, we help them try to figure out how their buildings are performing. We'll hire consultants to do before and after studies, share and publish the data. This is the way we've been trying to fill gaps. But we recognize we have to be more systematic at it, and certainly NRCan's EnerGuide program for housing provides an excellent model for understanding energy performance of buildings and how to then systematically pick off the low- hanging fruit and move to more and more challenging aspects of energy efficiency.
What are we doing about it? CMHC continues to invest heavily in social, economic and technical research. We work closely with Natural Resources Canada through the program for energy, research and development, where NRCan works with government departments and provides funding to make energy-efficiency studies in sectors. We work closely with the National Research Council because they are the scientific experts in material science, testing of materials and performance of buildings. Every four-year period we set up a research program with those two groups primarily to try to fill the gaps that we know exist, whether in technologies or practices or whole-building performance. There is an ongoing effort to fill these gaps, and I'm hoping that moving forward, particularly on the multi-family stock, we'll spend more time at that and be able to do a baseline and better project where funding for new and existing buildings has to go in order to make the best impact for owners, tenants and, of course, in the publicly owned housing, taxpayers.
Senator Seidman: I really appreciate what you just said, because it's not reasonable to expect private sector lenders to finance energy-efficient housing without data that demonstrates where they best make their investment.
Mr. Hill: They speak to the risks associated with that all the time. They say, "Sure, we've got scads of money. We're looking for better than 1 per cent. If you can offer me a 2.5 or 3 per cent return on my dollar, tell me how you're going to do it. Show me the study on the building or the collection of buildings that you want to finance energy-efficiency retrofits on, and tell me how the flow of money will come back to me. And what certainty do you have that money will materialize in terms of energy savings? We hear that if you insulate the building, tenants will leave their windows open, so no gain.'' That's the push-back you get without data, so point taken.
Senator Griffin: Do you receive many applicants for your green home program?
Mr. Hill: You have me there. That's a mortgage loan insurance program. We do work closely with NRCan because they provide the technical basis of the program that says they qualify for funding or don't qualify. I can come up with the numbers for you on both the single-family homes and the multi-unit residential stock because their programs applied for both.
Senator Griffin: Thank you. If you'd send it to the clerk, then we'll all get it.
What are the biggest obstacles that would prevent a homeowner from improving the energy efficiency of their home?
Mr. Hill: The greatest obstacles?
Senator Griffin: Yes.
Mr. Hill: I think of myself and it's money and disruption. However, most of us realize that if you invest in something and there's a return on it, it's worth doing. Then it comes back to information. If somebody can be told that there's an investment to be made and it offers a certain return and they can rationalize against any other returns they may be able to make anywhere else, I think that's key to the equation of incenting change.
Information is what I'm getting at—clear information on the costs of energy-efficiency retrofits and the expected return on your money, because that's key. People either have to borrow money or take money out of their savings or whatever to finance these, so there are costs and benefits they have to be aware of.
Now, there are also non-financial returns, and even getting at those, which CMHC does spend a lot of time on, we like to speak to, say, in a house or a building, greater comfort. Or if you're undergoing a building envelope retrofit where you are replacing siding and adding insulation and windows, what comfort can you expect that would improve things in your home? What improvements could you make that would improve the resiliency of your house? While the wall is down, you may as well do air sealing and correct any moisture problems, nail stuff down better if you're expecting storms. There are softer opportunities that are worth communicating to people as well. I would say information is key.
A lot of people say, "Well, isn't it incentives? Do we need to mail everybody a cheque?'' I would say it helps, but usually because it focuses attention on the opportunity.
I would say what NRCan put out to the average Canadian under the EnerGuide program was modest, but it leveraged a lot of activity. It wasn't that you put one dollar of energy-efficiency improvement into a house and you got one dollar of activity. Other things happened. There were other improvements made to the building envelope. If they were replacing a furnace, they may have upgraded the air conditioning system as well. There is a lot of information around energy efficiency that has to be made available to individual consumers who own homes, but also to owners of the multi-unit stock, whether publicly or privately held.
Senator Griffin: That's great. Our committee did a study tour of Eastern Canada, and Summerside, Prince Edward Island, was one of the places we visited. It was impressive the number of heat pumps in that small city. That's a case where either there was good publicity about the benefits of heat pumps or neighbours told neighbours. Three of my siblings that I know of — maybe more because I have seven siblings — have heat pumps.
Mr. Hill: Heat pumps are interesting. I imagine they're air-source heat pumps. They're not ones working in the ground in wells.
Senator Griffin: The ground ones.
Mr. Hill: Ground-source and air-source heat pumps have improved remarkably over the years. But people still need to understand that, okay, I'm paying $4,000 for an air-source heat pump, or $12,000 to $15,000, depending on the drilling conditions, for a ground-source one. Heavy outlay. What will I save over what I'm paying for oil, propane, electricity or natural gas? Natural gas is pretty hard to compete with since it's a low-cost fuel. But in places like Prince Edward Island where you are more oil-dependent, or electricity, that's where you need to demonstrate the financial gain and the performance of what it's going to mean to their homes and comfort.
I'm ignoring that many people are still motivated by the environment, and maybe they would like to know they haven't got an oil tank sitting on their property ready to leak and cause a small environmental disaster. That rings true for people as well. People are conscious about their emissions. It never ceases to amaze me how that will drive action as well.
It comes back to information. People will say, well, does it have a net environmental gain? You're telling me I have to dig up the ground and put in a well system. Is that going to be an environmental risk, the chemicals and refrigerants we're pumping into the ground? How does that compare to an oil tank? Even that's part of the information mix that Canadians need to make informed decisions.
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Hill, the data we have shows that the buildings, homes and institutional buildings in Canada include the electricity produced by 70 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions. How do we compare to the Western world and other developed countries in terms of our building stock?
Mr. Hill: I would say roughly we compare well with the Americans in how our stock performs. But compared with other places, particularly Germany and the U.K. and some of the other EU countries that are making headway on advancing energy efficiency in their buildings, we're probably a little behind.
Again, we come back to a data question about, overall, how does the stock perform relative to other sectors. I don't have the information on me that I can say that here is the pie for Canada's buildings or the built environment versus transportation versus any of the other sectors and how that might change with countries, but we can see what we could provide to the committee, if that's what you're looking at, the relativity of the percentage of where the built stock performs vis-à-vis the rest of the economy.
Senator MacDonald: Yes.
Mr. Hill: Certainly Natural Resources Canada publishes information in that regard, and I've seen reports from Environment Canada as well, but I don't have the numbers with me.
Senator MacDonald: What's the most cost-effective way to improve the carbon footprint of our housing stock that we're not presently putting into effect?
Mr. Hill: You have got me there. If you had said technically feasible, that would have been an easier one.
Senator MacDonald: You can say that too.
Mr. Hill: Technically feasible. Technically, it's electrification. It's the same in the transportation sector, but the electrification of the stock, assuming where your electricity comes from isn't an oil-burning electrical generator or fuel- fired combustion coal, but Canada's push to clean electrical generation, if we're successful there, and we can be relatively certain that the electricity that flows into buildings is clean, you would say if you use electricity for heating, hot water and appliances, that will also be clean. As soon as you move off a fuel-fired source, you have an immediate impact. People have talked about the electrification of the economy and of buildings.
This is where I thought you might have been going with the heat pumps. Because in recent years the heat pump technology, particularly on the lower-cost air-source heat pumps, has made terrific gains in terms of efficiency and being able to operate in Canada's cold climate.
Twenty years ago, an air-source heat pump would stop operating at an efficiency that would have made it viable at about zero degrees, just about when you needed it. But now they're getting down to minus 25 and minus 30, so they are becoming more viable year round, which helps in the economics for Canadians because you are getting more benefit rather than switching off in September or October.
Anyway, coming back to electrification, if you look at what we're doing to some of the roofs in the EQuilibrium demonstration initiative, they're covered with photovoltaics that are generating electricity. That electricity in most of those houses is flowing right back into the grid, mainly because there were lucrative contracts to buy the electricity generated, but if you were using it, you could use that energy in your own home for space heating, hot water and your lights and appliances. That seems to make sense — an approach to reduce the carbon footprint of housing.
I say "technically'' because this is expensive. In many provinces electricity is prohibitively expensive to do this without lowering the energy loads and consumption in housing first.
We're doing a project with the Yukon studying the feasibility in that cold climate of taking out their oil-fired furnaces in houses and replacing them with electric heat. Electric heat isn't the most expensive in the Yukon of the three territories, but it's up there, especially when you are trying to heat in that climate. They recognize that there's a balance somewhere, that if they take the savings of what they would otherwise spend on oil, which is significant each year, and heavily insulate the buildings and move to high-efficiency lighting like the LED lighting which is quite common now, high-efficiency appliances — what you trade off in higher electricity costs but using less of it, are you better off than where you were with oil?
That's ignoring another benefit that the Yukon Housing Corporation is very interested in, the simplicity of electric systems.
When you don't have a fuel-fired furnace and hot water tank and an oil tank in the yard, that's a huge maintenance gain for housing service providers. If you put electric baseboards into a house, they will run 40, 50, 60 years before you have to replace them, and then it is a couple thousand dollars to replace them, as opposed to an oil-fired furnace, which might run, depending on the service, 15 to 25 years, and it's a $4,500 or $5,000 charge. Never mind the oil tank in the yard that, if it tips over and causes an environmental disaster, is tens of thousands of dollars to clean up.
Yukon Housing is very interested in the electrification opportunity in their stock, and they recognize that if they control the loads, maybe the high cost of electricity becomes more manageable because you're not using that much of it.
That's coming back to the information and the research that CMHC, Natural Resources Canada and the National Research Council are focused on now, trying to see how far you have to go on the efficiency side before electricity, given the diversity of costs across the country, makes economic sense for the people who have to pay the bill.
Senator Fraser: Going back to water being the new fire, does CMHC exclude from its programs housing built on flood plains?
Mr. Hill: No, we engage where buildings get permits to be built. We cooperate within the whole housing delivery system, so if the local jurisdictions having authority permit construction and have done their due diligence and there's a permit to go with the property, it's insurable. I can verify that, but essentially we don't have special provisions that say, "Wait a minute: The city or province is saying you're allowed to build and they are making the decisions about development patterns.'' CMHC hasn't taken the position where we're saying, "We're not playing along with that; sorry, it's not going to happen.'' We work within the system and say if you can get a permit for a building and it's built to code and meets all the requirements, it's eligible.
Senator Fraser: Let me plant the seed that if CMHC is meant to be a leader, maybe some action on this front might be constructive.
Do you have any programs or incentives of any kind to move development away from flood plains?
Mr. Hill: No, not that I'm aware of. But that's another inquiry I can make internally.
Senator Fraser: If you would, I would be grateful. Thank you.
Senator Black: Thank you very much, Mr. Hill, for being here. I want to pick up on the questioning of Senators MacDonald and Fraser. What I want to know is pretty straightforward: Given it's the Government of Canada driving Canada towards a lower-carbon economy — that's not a criticism; it's an observation of fact — and given CMHC is an arm of the Government of Canada, tell us specifically what your organization is doing, or intends to do, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the housing stock, either directly or through incentives to builders. What is the action plan?
Mr. Hill: It's multi-faceted. The green home programs and the mortgage loan and insurance flexibilities are one approach to encourage energy efficiency in new and existing buildings, and we'll follow up with uptake information to the committee.
So on the commercial side, they're paying attention. They recognize that if you're paying more for energy efficiency to build or retrofit when financing a project, we'll help with a refund on your mortgage loan insurance deductible.
On the research side, I made reference to CMHC's researchers working carefully with other departments to look at housing form and study the best way to plan, design, build and operate, maintain and, eventually, renovate: Working across the life cycle of buildings, where's the best place for intervention of energy-efficiency technologies, practices, O&M guidance, consumer information to allow them to operate their housing efficiently, and at the end of the life cycle, coming up with decisions vis-à-vis renovating or building new again?
That's the research stream I'm responsible for at CMHC, and we work closely with other federal, provincial and territorial departments and housing stock people.
In terms of moving forward on policies and programs, we did hear the emphasis on the need for sustainability. We also recognize the government has multiple objectives it would like to see achieved in any of its programs, and the National Housing Strategy is no exception. We expect, working in collaboration with Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, to come up with guidelines for energy efficiency in any new program that comes out of CMHC.
What they look like is under discussion now. It will depend on the shape of the program. We recognize that the government does have a multi-objective agenda and would like to achieve as many of those objectives in any program it underwrites, with housing being no exception. Will it deliver housing under a national housing strategy in CMHC's programs? We would like to see it as energy-efficient and low-carbon as possible, but it also extends to being accessible to Canadians with a variety of disabilities and needs, and extends to social inclusion and making sure housing is no barrier to that in the communities and housing we're building.
We're conscious of the government agenda and the need to build in a multi-pronged approach to address federal needs. Is that too high level?
Senator Black: No. I know where you're going. May I continue, Mr. Chair?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Black: You've talked to us about research, which is good. You've talked about providing guidance, which is good. But you haven't told us whether you have any sticks, carrots or intention, to build on what Senator Massicotte asked you, if people are building buildings and don't need your support to do it, because the market demands it or it's the right price point, et cetera.
Is it fair for us to look at your agency to ensure our goals on the housing stock are met — such as GHG reductions — or not? If you're the guy to talk to, great. If not, who do we talk to about action?
Mr. Hill: That is a great point. I hear you. The programs, moving forward, will address energy efficiency. There's no doubt about it. The communication across departments on aligning a national housing strategy with environmental objectives is there.
Senator Black: I can read it, but I don't have to follow it.
Mr. Hill: If you're coming to us for funding, you would. If you're not coming to us for funding, that's where the softer approach comes into play, and I'm back to generating information and guidance and where there is a stake, and that gets picked up is in the codes. CMHC does flow information into the codes. Our studies are relied upon by the building codes commission to inform code development.
In fact, our EQuilibrium demonstration initiative was voluntary. We got 10 builders to demonstrate the technical feasibility and as a result we now have reports and evidence that it is possible. This is informing codes saying, "Maybe if we were thinking of getting to net zero by 2030, it's not a moon shot.'' Builders have demonstrated it. So CMHC's standards flow into the code and standards development process, which do end up being sticks.
Senator Black: Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Patterson: Thank you. The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples studied housing needs on First Nations reserves and in the North over the last couple of years, and you may be familiar with the recommendations. I would like to review some of the key recommendations and ask you for comments.
We talked about building codes. The first one was that we were shocked to find building codes weren't in place in many First Nations communities, out of deference to their local jurisdiction to establish those codes.
There was a recommendation regarding the relevant authorities, and CMHC is a prime source of funding for housing for Aboriginal peoples under section 95 of the National Housing Act and under cost-shared programs in the territories.
Has progress been made on implementing and enforcing building codes to get value for the money you're pouring into First Nations reserves?
Mr. Hill: I can't speak to that directly. CMHC, for funding for houses made on reserves, asked for assurances that they are constructed to the National Building Code of Canada, but, of course, enforcement and quality assurance fall to the housing providers on reserves.
I can't speak today to an assessment of the effectiveness of that or where we are with making headway in that regard.
Senator Patterson: I'll put that on your radar.
The other thing is you spoke about the National Housing Strategy, and I know it's emerging and promised for this year, I believe. There were some strong recommendations coming from our committee that the National Housing Strategy should look at the challenges in indigenous communities and in the North. I know there have been some workshops and focus in that area.
Would you be able to comment on whether the National Housing Strategy will look at those needs in remote, northern and Indigenous communities?
Mr. Hill: It is. It's a parallel process with the National Housing Strategy writ large, and we're working on that with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.
I don't have any more details other than that, except it's progress in motion.
Senator Patterson: We recommended that there be a coordinated strategy for government research and development into northern and remote housing. You talked about your collaboration with the National Research Council and NRCan. You know, INAC spends half a billion dollars or so a year on First Nations housing, and we just felt strongly that there needs to be a coordinated strategy for the various efforts being made.
We heard from CanmetENERGY yesterday, who built a model energy-efficient home for the North here in Canada.
How is that coordination working? I mention INAC because they are big housing providers.
Mr. Hill: Primarily, CMHC works with Natural Resources Canada and the CanmetENERGY centre you referred to. I think they call it the "rapidly deployable house.'' We're familiar with it because we talk about it often. It's the same with the National Research Council. We work closely with them on materials, equipment and systems. Could we be doing more to engage Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada? Yes. They're currently not directly involved in the research CMHC does on the technical side.
I know that Polar Knowledge Canada is making significant efforts and headway trying to coordinate action across governments, territories and municipalities in the North. The opening of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station is providing impetus, if not space, to better draw people into the room to focus resources to solve these programs. I know they're planning many different initiatives to achieve what you're getting at beyond what we're currently doing. We're looking forward to participating with that initiative and welcome Polar's intervention and offer to bring a larger table to solving these problems.
Senator Patterson: The committee believed there should be a model building code for the North, that the building code is in progress and the National Building Code is great, but those principles don't always work in the extreme climates in the North.
Would you have any comments on the need for building codes that are more adaptable to extreme cold climates? You mentioned the Whitehorse work you're doing.
Mr. Hill: Yes. I'm aware there's a great deal of interest in modifying the building code for application in the North. It's not just for the climate; it's also in recognition of the extended supply chains and the cost of doing business. Everything we take for granted down here isn't necessarily true up there, particularly in Nunavut. I'm aware of the interest, and I also know NRC's Canadian codes commission secretariat is looking into this and trying to understand where the pressure points are and how the code might address them.
It's one thing to say we should just change the code, but it's another thing to look at exactly line by line what would have to change and what would make the most sense from a cost-benefit point of view. As we say, we address insulation levels, airtightness, resiliency, wind loads — of course, they're high up there as well — and any other gaps they perceive that the code doesn't address. Over the duration of the code development process, it has been careful to look at the cost-benefit of any of the code changes.
Is there a southern bias? Probably, because that's where the data exists, and, of course, where the most houses are being constructed is south of 60. I get where they're coming from; I'm aware of it.
CMHC is not directly involved because we're not a code-writing organization, but we are involved in the research that can help inform code changes, from heat recovery and ventilation efficiency for housing stock in the North through to resilient construction systems. We're there and interested in working with northern stakeholders to test new systems that perform better in the North. This sort of testing and information generation is what goes into code development processes.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
The Chair: I just have a few questions, sir. You say that net-zero-energy housing is technically and financially achievable, and it's being done in a number of areas across the country. I assume those are net-zero homes that are being built or have been built in the recent past. Can you tell us where they are? If you don't have that information, can you at least provide it to us?
Mr. Hill: I have general information. But I have to tell you, when CMHC started on this path in 2006, it raised eyebrows as to what we were doing in this space when we were still dealing with mouldy houses or other common problems that needed our attention. Why were we dealing with net-zero? We took a bit of abuse for this, but we leaped in because we realized there were some leading builders already doing it and there were certainly international examples of doing it.
I'm not talking about off-grid houses because we know you can live in an off-grid house with varying degrees of comfort and how much work you have to put into it to make it work. We can do that. But when we start talking about grid-connected net-zero-energy houses that are commercially viable that you can build in cities and they make sense, that was a new thought. So when we started, we didn't even know what kind of response we would get. We threw a request for information out, and we got over 650 downloads of this request for information; from those, I think we ended up with 60 or so detailed plans from builders saying, "Yes, we want to participate in this demonstration initiative you're doing. We know you're not going to give us any dollars for construction, but we're going to do it anyway.'' Out of that we got 10 houses at the end of 2006 and 2007.
At the same time, organizations like the Canadian Home Builders' Association started their own net-zero-energy committees and coalitions, and now they're out flogging to their members, the rank and file, the viability of this progress. For the leading home building organization in Canada to say this is something they're going to promote and ask their members to voluntarily do it was a big change.
The Chair: I appreciate all that. Where are they and how much do they cost?
Mr. Hill: Actually, I was going to get to Natural Resources Canada. They also followed up with a demonstration of net-zero-energy homes. It's ongoing.
The Chair: We met with them.
Mr. Hill: There is a variety of projects going on across Canada. I can't point to their locations, but we could follow up with NRCan if they haven't already pointed them out.
How much do they cost?
The Chair: You say there are several net-zero-energy home building initiatives under way across the country. I want to know where they are and how much they cost.
Mr. Hill: I can't point to individual projects except for the NRCan projects. I can look at what CHBA has achieved through its membership. We're not tracking them. We're picking up anecdotally the stories going forward.
The Chair: You don't know. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. Hill: We know the activity is out there, people are building, and we're getting what we call "passive houses'' from Germany being built here. It's anecdotal. But we are seeing developments going up and builders moving towards net-zero-ready projects. I can't give you addresses. I can follow up with NRCan on their demonstration project because it's quite big.
The Chair: We met with NRCan on their demonstration project. Anything you can do to help that statement in your presentation to us, if you can provide us with information to drill down a bit more in your statement, I would appreciate that.
Mr. Hill: Sure.
The Chair: Secondly, we met with Canmet and NRCan in regard to buildings and housing. They informed us, at least as I remember, that by 2022 they will have a code in place that would bring existing stock housing to net-zero across Canada. In fact, they even had some applications to say that what would happen at that point is that you couldn't even sell your house until you brought your house up to that code. It was quite interesting to me to hear those kinds of things, because of the pressure being put on people who own existing stock.
But they also said that, in fact, with all the things they were doing with housing, by 2030 they would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 27 million tonnes. Now, it's estimated by NRCan that buildings will produce 94 million tonnes by 2030. So that's about a third. But I couldn't seem to get a cost figure from anyone, and I'm interested in what this is going to cost the ordinary person across Canada with their home. Some of them, today, are 100 years old, some of them are 30 years old and some are 10 years old. What is it going to cost them to be able to gain that 27 million tonnes?
I'll use a hypothetical number, because that's the information we were getting: If it's only a third of what is produced now and that cost is $500 a tonne, would it make sense to actually try to do that in the housing stock all across Canada, or would it make sense to try to get some of that 27 million tonnes someplace else? I don't seem to see anybody thinking about how we do that and how we rationalize it, because to make or rebuild a house today — and they're different all over the country — to be net zero by 2022, that's only five years from now and 2030 is only 13 years from now, and we expect the public to be able to foot that bill. I know they will have energy savings moving forward, but they first have to have the cash to do it, and I don't think every household has that cash to do it or that CMHC has enough funding to actually give grants or low-interest loans to accomplish it.
Maybe you could help me a little bit with some of what I've just said to you. Tell me whether I'm wrong or whether I'm looking at things in a realistic way. Because that's what I'm all about: It comes down to what it will cost Fred and Martha, the average citizen in Canada, to be able to meet these standards. It's all good; I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do it. That's not what I'm trying to say. We should try to do it. But five years and 13 years go by pretty quick, at least it does at my age.
Mr. Hill: Mr. Chair, I agree with you that we have to look carefully, especially if the government is putting money into this in terms of incentives or even investing in codes and code development, for that matter, and the cost per tonne saved relative to what you might get somewhere else. That said, you also have to look at it over the life cycle of the asset you're trying to improve. A big challenge we have right now is we have a fairly old stock. Even if we went to net zero tomorrow on all the new stock, it will be a smidgen of the overall problem of greenhouse gas emission generation by the stock.
The other issue is that codes don't apply to existing buildings unless you're doing a substantial renovation. I know there's talk about whether there is anything we should be building to a renovation code that would be able to push change in existing buildings. Renovation codes usually only come into play when you're renovating. If you're doing nothing in your house, nobody will march along and tell you to do something. That's true of many different things, except for health and fire safety concerns. You will get a fire department pounding on your door if you don't have a smoke detector in your home.
I can confirm this with the Canadian codes commission, but it's not my understanding that a renovation code would be in place that would force people to do something in five years to go to net zero. The existing stock is a challenge. We only did one house in our EQuilibrium initiative as a reno. It was a CMHC wartime house. We made substantial improvements but still only got it down to 60, 70 per cent better than where it was. There's no doubt that it was significant; we're taking a house built in 1947 and preparing it for the 22nd century. It will be with us for a long time it and will be performing a lot better.
But regarding the cost of a reno, you're right that it's difficult to get to net zero on existing stock. I think we have to recognize that in code standards, what we're achieving and what we can incent Canadians to do. I'd have to clarify your earlier comments that you thought that there was going to be an effort to bring the existing stock up to net zero by 2022, because I'm not quite sure how you would do that legally under the existing codes framework.
It's different when considering moving new buildings to net zero or near net zero. They talk a lot about near net zero, which is making buildings very energy-efficient but not getting to the point where they will put renewable energy generation systems on the building to get to the zero point. That's usually what it takes. You can't get to net zero through efficiency alone. It usually takes on-site renewable energy generation.
Getting buildings to that point by 2030 is the target. It is new buildings, and they're hoping that means that the technologies, the practices, the standards and the know-how to improve the existing stock pull along with the new stock. It does happen. There is a trickle-down into the renovation industry. In fact, when I renovated my basement two summers ago, the City of Ottawa told me I had to do it to code because it was a substantial renovation. You're not rebuilding your house, but because you're gutting it, we want it up to code. Now my basement is more heavily insulated than the upper floor, because the house was built in the late 1960s. You can see where we can make improvements, incent change and ask for it in renovations, but we can't mandate it to happen.
I hear you on justifying the cost per tonne. If we're going to incent, invest in or study change in the housing sector, how do we know it's the best place to put government dollars? I understand the question, but I don't have an answer for you.
The Chair: Okay. I'm sorry if I misspoke a little bit. By 2022, they would have net-zero code in place, but you would have until 2030 to do it. You could not do it, I guess, by 2030 if you continued to live in it, but if you ever wanted to sell it, if you wanted to change occupancy or if you even started to renovate, it would have to go to the net-zero code. What I'm saying is that I don't know whether that's always a good expenditure of money, and I get that you agree with me. I'm sorry if I got confused a little bit with the years.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Regarding the information that you said you would provide to different senators, if you give it to the clerk, she will make sure it gets to every one of us.
We are continuing our study on the effects of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
For the second segment, I am pleased to welcome, from the Canadian Standards Association Group, Dwayne Torrey, Director, Construction and Infrastructure; and Michael Leering, Director, Environment and Business Excellence. Thank you for being here. We look forward to your presentation.
Dwayne Torrey, Director, Construction and Infrastructure, CSA Group: Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable senators. We appreciate the opportunity to address the committee. I am Dwayne Torrey, Director of Construction and Infrastructure at CSA Group, more commonly known as Canadian Standards Association. With me is my colleague Michael Leering, Director of Environment and Business Excellence Standards.
In the next few minutes, we would like to outline three key points. First, we will provide an overview of who CSA is, how we fit into the national fabric, our stakeholders and how we function.
Second, we will provide information on CSA's work in the built environment and how we are working with the federal government to develop climate change solutions through standards for a more resilient built environment.
Finally, we will discuss the importance of standards-based solutions in helping Canada meet its commitment to reducing GHG emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels.
CSA was established almost 100 years ago in 1919 and today is the largest of the accredited standards development organizations in Canada. We are a member-based association serving business, government and consumers with over 3,000 published codes and standards in 54 subject areas, including infrastructure, environment, energy, quality management and health care.
CSA's mission is to represent the interests of our members in creating a better, safer, more sustainable world primarily through standards development, technical research and training in relevant fields.
Utilizing over 9,000 volunteer experts, CSA facilitates the development of standards through a transparent process founded on balanced representation and consensus. This rigorous process ensures the standards we develop are sound, defensible and provide the proper level of impact. We also actively manage many national committees to support Canada's participation on the international standards development stage.
CSA standards are voluntary and only become mandatory when referenced by government or a regulatory authority. Once published, standards are living documents, continually revised and refreshed to address changing requirements and emerging technologies.
We will now provide a brief overview of CSA's work in the built environment, and how we are working with the federal government to develop climate change solutions through standards for a more resilient built environment.
CSA has been serving the needs of the built environment for over 95 years. From the first standard on steel railway bridges that was published in 1920, CSA has been continually working to ensure Canadians are protected through our accredited standards development process. The standards we develop serve as benchmarks for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure.
Standards cover structural engineering, the building envelope, construction materials, electrical systems, renewable technologies and many other subjects. These standards have been developed using a multi-stakeholder process which creates a high level of continuity and confidence for the public. Over 100 CSA standards developed for the built environment are incorporated by reference in provincial and federal regulations through the National Building Code of Canada, which is adopted throughout the country.
Most recently, CSA has launched a number of critical climate change adaptation standards projects in collaboration with the National Research Council of Canada, through the NRC Climate-Resilient Core Public Infrastructure initiative.
Addressing issues such as basement flooding, durability of buildings and resilience of our electrical grid, this groundbreaking work supported by the federal government is resulting in the modification of traditional construction and engineering standards to build in climate resiliency to our rapidly changing climate patterns.
Michael Leering, Director, Environment and Business Excellence, CSA Group: In regard to supporting and developing standardization solutions to help Canada meet its commitment to reducing GHG emissions, CSA has a long history of involvement. We do this through work not only nationally but internationally via the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, and the International Electrotechnical Commission, or IEC.
On the international stage, CSA actively manages key ISO leadership roles on behalf of the Standards Council of Canada. We have held the role of international secretariat to TC 207, environmental management, since 1993 and, with the support of our Canadian delegation, have led the development of numerous keynote ISO standards, including environmental management systems, auditing, labelling, life cycle assessment and greenhouse gas accounting and management. More recently we have managed ISO's Climate Change Coordination Committee, establishing a road map and guidance for all ISO committees with regard to climate impacts.
CSA administers the national mirror committees for sustainability in buildings and the civil engineering work, looking at such issues such as calculation, reporting, verification and communication of carbon metrics and environmental product declarations of construction products. We also support the national mirror committee addressing effective energy management via ISO 50001. Through this latter committee, we understand the importance of energy efficiency in the built environment and the ability to set a benchmark of performance and continual improvement for all building types regardless of size or current levels of efficiency.
Within Canada, CSA has developed many offerings which support the effective implementation of our standards such as our Greenhouse Gas or Environmental Product Declaration registries. CSA registries help industry showcase effective carbon reduction and environmental improvements, which follow the important standards we facilitate.
Our registries currently showcase over 71 million tonnes of GHG reductions and 113 carbon inventories. We are the sole GHG registry provider supporting the Government of Alberta's carbon regulation with a majority of our serialized tonnes being part of that regulated system. Additionally, the CSA Environmental Product Declaration Registry showcases the sustainability of products over their full life cycle, which is particularly relevant to the construction and building sectors.
Mr. Torrey: Manufacturers have been successful in developing new technologies that have reduced energy consumption and lowered the impact of their products on the environment. Building owners are increasingly supportive of low-carbon construction approaches, as these ideals represent the needs of an ever more conscious client base. Designers and builders are discovering and implementing technologies that identify methodologies to construct and maintain low-carbon buildings.
CSA would be pleased to play a role in helping the government establish a sound framework for GHG reduction in the built environment. This could be done through balanced engagement of industry leaders in construction and GHG reduction, establishing consensus-based standards and supporting registration and accounting to help achieve reduced carbon targets. Because CSA is a trusted adviser and facilitator, outcomes of deliberations would meet the scrutiny of numerous impacted parties.
CSA believes that supporting GHG reductions in the built environment via standardized solutions is possible, and can assist in bringing together the right expertise. Solutions may include codes and standards to guide GHG reduction in construction, utilization of life cycle inventories and EPDs, energy efficiency implementation, standardized GHG quantification and reporting for the built environment and labelling of projects. CSA's consultation and development processes could play a valuable role as the government works toward their objective.
In closing, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss CSA's work in the built environment and opportunities to help Canada achieve its GHG targets by collaborating with various sectors and experts at the national and international levels.
CSA's unique core competence and strong membership base provide a platform for developing standards that support the move to a low-carbon economy, protect the lives of Canadians, enhance business opportunities, and position Canada as one of the top standards-development countries in the world. We would be pleased to answer any questions you have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you very much for your presentation this morning. Your organization has a significant role, as you noted, in the measurement of many factors, and I guess our concern over the last several years has been climate change. It's very important you do your work, and I think you're doing good work, and it's important you continue doing so. You're one of the few organizations that basically counts the impact of all this stuff and you have a capacity to do so.
As you know, many economists, though, criticize our process. The approach we're having is that we have a multi- prong impact, multi, multi, multi, in many factors. Every time we see an opportunity, we seem to be adopting it, but, in some cases, the costs of getting that CO2 per tonne way exceed the CO2 price we're proposing. If you look at the car manufacturing sector, some of the changes we're making are probably $400, $500 a tonne. Therefore, we're all over the map. We're adopting a lot of stuff, which is not the most efficient way to get there.
I'm a market guy. I love the market. The market is very efficient. I would say, "Put the price up there; let manufacturers decide how they're going to get there.'' But that's not the way many governments are responding. In our own way, we're doing all kinds of stuff between the regulatory approach. The regulatory approach is usually much more expensive than the market, but how do we get there?
Do you share that? In other words, some stuff sounds good, technically possible, but very expensive to get there. We're not being very efficient in that process. Would you comment on that?
Mr. Leering: From the perspective of markets and the effectiveness and ability for them to move the needle, as you will, it does provide the ability to change the return on investment for investments into carbon reduction strategies. But, to clarify, CSA Group isn't directly quantifying. We are managing committees that develop standards in these areas to support industry implementing those tactics.
Senator Massicotte: I thought earlier, when you summarized some of the capacity you're doing, you're basically offering your service to calculate how much, what the impact is.
Mr. Leering: Yes. We offer registrations or GHG registries. Within our greenhouse gas registries, we showcase the results of these actions, but I can't specifically speak to the ability of the carbon markets to affect the net results. Our registries publicly showcase the GHG reduction projects in a public, transparent way. Within the ISO standard systems, the quantification systems are put forward, and those follow basic principles of completeness, transparency, accuracy, et cetera.
Senator Massicotte: So you can show the amount of CO2 we save, but you never price it?
Mr. Leering: Correct.
Senator Dean: Thanks for the presentation. You touched, I think, fairly quickly on what you feel the federal government and possibly other levels of government can do. Could I return you to that? Could tell us where you think the federal government and other levels of government, if appropriate, can best promote and assist some of the work that you do? Tell us a little bit about the relationship with the federal government, ease of access.
If you had to choose two or three priority areas where you think that you could be supported most and where it would have the biggest impact in terms of working with governments, where would those be?
Mr. Torrey: As I mentioned before, we're the voice of our membership base, and that membership base includes consumers, regulators, industry. So we take that advice. When they want to make a move forward, we help them with that.
I think that one possible opportunity is demonstration by the federal government, standing behind, trying to move an initiative forward even within the federal government, some of the building projects that they are working on. I think that it's important that the international work that we're doing be recognized and considered very carefully. As mentioned before, CSA, through Standards Council of Canada, is very heavily involved in work on the international stage, and a lot of really great work has been done in the area of GHG accounting, verification. Some of these key components, I think, will play a very valuable role moving forward in working with the members and the stakeholder base, determining what is appropriate for adoption into Canada. What can we bring into play in very short order in Canada to start to implement some of these best practices that have been developed by experts from around the world?
Senator Dean: Do you find that the federal government is responsive to those overtures or is that something you have to work hard at achieving?
Mr. Torrey: We're finding that the federal government is very responsive. The Standards Council of Canada is very supportive of Canada's position on the international stage. From a national level and some of the work that's being done, as I mentioned before, the National Research Council has been very collaborative in trying to help us with some resiliency issues. I mentioned before that some of the work we're doing is more about helping us address the current impacts of what climate change is doing to us right now — we're seeing what's happening down in the Caribbean; we're seeing the flooding that's happening here in Canada — to work with organizations like CSA in developing standards that are helping Canadians right now. As mentioned before, right now we're working on the first standard for basement flooding for residential homes, something that is going to have a major impact, and that is work directly being pushed by the National Research Council.
In addition, the Standards Council of Canada is also very supportive of the work to try to affect climate change through the Northern Infrastructure Standardization Initiative and some of the work they're trying to do to help in the North. In the previous session, they were talking about how we can help to effect change and help in the North. Some of the standards that have been developed, such as permafrost issues, foundations for buildings in the North, are critical work that is happening right now.
Senator Griffin: You've mentioned that the standards that are developed are basically voluntary unless they're adopted by government, and I assume you mean the three levels of government, any of the three levels of government. As a resident of Canada's smallest province and as a former municipal councillor, I'm interested to know: Do provinces generally adopt the standards that are developed, all provinces?
Mr. Torrey: Yes. When it comes to the built environment and the construction of buildings, both the Part 9 buildings, as was previously talked about, and Part 3, it all happens via the National Building Code of Canada, which is then adopted in the provinces and territories. There may be modifications to that national code. Some adopt it outright, and some make medium and sometimes significant changes to that national code. It is typically adopted by all provinces and territories in varying timelines.
Senator Griffin: I'm assuming the timing of the uptake might be a little different in the larger provinces as compared to a small province, for instance.
Mr. Torrey: That is correct. Some provinces adopt it in very short order. Other provinces do take some amount of time because they go through and do make their own provincial modifications to it. So, in some cases, it can take a couple of years.
Senator Griffin: When you made your presentation, I think you did say — but I just want to be sure that I got it — that you do consultation with all of the provinces as part of your development of standards.
Mr. Torrey: When we develop standards, we have a very broad base of members. A given technical committee will be built based on the needs of the standard that that committee is developing or suite of standards that the committee is developing. We want to make sure we have broad representation so that we have a very balanced decision-making process in the development of a standard. So we have a matrix-based committee approach. That won't mean that we always have representation from every province and territory on a standards development committee, but we have adequate representation to make sure that the voice of regulators is at the table, as well as the voices of consumers, industry and technical experts. As you may know, resources are always difficult to come by. We would always love to have more regulatory voices at the table, but just with the fact of time and availability, we make sure that we have a proper sampling from across the country.
Senator Griffin: Okay. My final question, is the Federation of Canadian Municipalities involved in your process?
Mr. Torrey: The Federation of Canadian Municipalities isn't typically on our committees. I can't speak to whether we have any members from FCM, but we are very familiar with the federation.
Senator Fraser: Do you have standards for the energy efficiency of household appliances?
Mr. Torrey: We do have a number of energy-efficiency standards, but I wouldn't be the right one to speak to the specific standards.
Mr. Leering: They are not necessarily energy-efficiency standards, but we have a certification mark we refer to as our sustainability mark. Working with our cohorts in the U.S. and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, we have delivered a series of standards with specific regard to home appliances. These look at the life cycle of a product, like a fridge, and identify the hot spots with regard to environmental impacts, like refrigerators with refrigerants and ozone-depleting substances. The committees will identify those hot spots and set benchmarks for performance. These are bi-national standards we have been developing. I can send you more information on what the specifics are, but once set, these standards are adopted and created as national standards of Canada and the U.S. simultaneously, with our partnerships. From there, manufacturers of home appliances can get certified toward our sustainability certification.
Senator Fraser: If you're shopping, that certification registers.
What I want to know, and I'm not sure I get this from your otherwise very interesting answer, is whether those standards have been tightened over, let's say, the last 10 years.
Mr. Torrey: Yes. As industry moves forward and as the technologies improve, we have been improving the standards, whether it be for energy efficiency or the consumption of gas-burning appliances. On all the various standards that we have, we continuously work with our committees to make them better.
Our standards are all developed and maintained on a cycle, so they're constantly reviewed, and every five years we have to revisit the standard and make sure it's up-to-date and accurate. So it's common for us to go back and revisit and improve upon the standards as the technologies improve.
Senator Fraser: I'm really thinking about what individuals can actually do. What proportion of appliances now on the market meet your standards and get to be certified? Do you know?
Mr. Torrey: I wouldn't be able to answer that question for you, but I would be glad to take that back to see if we have any information.
Senator Fraser: That would be very interesting.
Mr. Leering: I will also follow up on that as well, but with respect to home appliances, the standards I referenced are in their first edition. They're new and are just hitting the marketplace now. Once or twice a year we publish a new one, so they're just hitting the marketplace as we create these standards for the specific home appliance area.
Senator Fraser: But they'll be tightened as we go forward, to the point that it's feasible?
Mr. Leering: Absolutely. They're all living documents. We have a requirement to revise them, at a minimum, every five years. Although these specific ones are in their first iteration, they will be looked at again within five years. They're just coming into the marketplace, but we can check back and get specifics on how well integrated they've been by the North American industry.
Senator Fraser: That would be very interesting.
The Chair: Yes, it would be very interesting. If you get that information and provide it to the clerk, everybody on the committee will receive it.
Senator Patterson: I would like to thank you for the presentation, and I was pleased to learn about your July 2017 study on Canada's North, which identified the key challenges facing Canada's North and the potential for standards to help address these issues.
I noted your recommendation on buildings, which we're focusing on in our study, among other issues; it really was music to my ears, about determining how northern buildings can be economically designed with less-complex mechanical systems and maintenance requirements to function successfully in areas without easy access to replacement parts or specialized maintenance professionals.
You just heard from CMHC and their representative, who is working on new housing needs research and who echoed those themes.
This report is very welcome. How do we take what you have analyzed with your experience and apply it to reality and improving government programs, building codes and better value for money in government funding for northern housing and infrastructure? How do we take your work and apply it to improve things?
Mr. Torrey: I'm really pleased to see that you read the research report; the research function is a key function at CSA Group now. We want to make sure we're being proactive versus reactive in the solutions we're trying to identify. The challenges in the North were among the first ones that came up as a major issue that we needed to play a part in.
We wanted to use that report to basically get the best information that we could find out there to help inform and potentially drive some new solutions that we could potentially play a part in.
For us, I think it's a matter of continued dialogue with the various federal departments I mentioned before. We work very closely with them to see if there are opportunities to drive those to a standards development process, for example, where we could actually come up with a product to help move some of these things forward.
Again, it's always about going back to the expertise of our member base. If they determine that there's a need for something — and that includes the regulatory bodies that we work with — then it's something that we're always willing to move forward.
Senator Patterson: I did ask the CMHC representative, who was very helpful, about the new National Housing Strategy that's being developed, which promises a focus on remote and indigenous housing needs.
I also mentioned building codes and the possibility of developing a northern code that wasn't southern-biased, which I think is the term he used. Is that something you would see as a result of this excellent research report you've done and your work with your stakeholder partners?
Mr. Torrey: I can't speak to whether a code would be developed out of that. We turn to and lean on bodies like the National Research Council of Canada to help determine if that's the right step. What we can provide are the standards that would be the building blocks for reference, whether it be via a code or brought directly into provincial or territorial regulations.
Senator Patterson: I think we can use all the advocates we can to coordinate the work of federal departments and ensure that they work together on strategies to meet the challenges in the North. Are you getting enough financial support to do that work? Usually when we ask that question the answer is always no, but can you tell us a bit about your funding base and whether it's adequate?
Mr. Torrey: We're funded in a variety of ways. This is one of the things that makes CSA unique. Some of our programs are entirely funded. For example, the standards we write for the nuclear sector are funded by the major organizations in that area. In construction, for example, we may be funded in various ways by different industry groups who need standards for the products and the services that they provide.
There are even cases where CSA will self-invest in a standard because our mission statement includes "better, safer, more sustainable world.'' We invest back in society if we see the need strongly enough.
People say there's never enough funding. Always with more you can do more, but we find that as the need approaches, usually we can find the resources from the champions for that specific issue to help drive that forward.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
The Chair: That brings us to the end of our questioners. I just have a couple of quick ones.
In your notes on page 2, the first paragraph, you say your registries currently showcase over 71 million tonnes of GHG reductions and 113 carbon inventories. Can you tell me over what period of time is the 71 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions you identify here? And help me with your 113 carbon inventories.
Mr. Leering: Our registries have been in operation — CSA acquired that resource and started operating independently in about 2007, so that time period and those metrics are really over a 10-year period.
The nuance and differentiation between our greenhouse gas projects, which obviously relate to the tonnes of carbon dioxide that have been reduced via a number of projects, are one area. With regard to carbon inventories, that's really just a greenhouse gas quantification of the impact of a footprint of a specific organization or building. Of the 113 we have registered, a large majority are buildings where they have quantified the footprint of a building and reported on the amount of emissions that a building does relate.
The Chair: Second, are you involved with NRCan or other government agencies in the development of these new standards for GHG-neutral homes? Are you spending time with that, or is any information from your organization going into that?
Mr. Torrey: We do quite a bit of work with NRCan as we do with NRC and other agencies. Areas like energy efficiency, renewables. They're a strong partner in those areas with us. We do a fair bit of work to try to move the bar forward when it comes to energy efficiency and other related items.
The Chair: Well, thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentation. It was very interesting. I know you do some very good work and we appreciate that. Thank you.
Honourable senators, before we wrap up, I want to remind you that members of this committee are meeting with a delegation from Mongolia next Tuesday, September 26, at 8:30 a.m. in Room 256-S, Centre Block, to discuss at their request mining regulation and governance, sustainable mining concepts and challenges and realities within a Canadian context. I hope you can join us and please let Maxime know as soon as possible whether you will be there or not.
(The committee adjourned.)