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House Hansard - 267

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2023 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 267 - Dec/13/23
Ms. Julie Dabrusin (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Lib.)
  • Dec/13/23 7:04:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question that was brought forward by my friend from Kitchener Centre. If we are going to be talking about things like the greener homes grant, I think that, first of all, we should give a shout-out to how successful it has been and how wonderful it is that we have seen so many Canadians who are interested in this program. It has been a tremendous success, so it is good to see that as one part of what we are doing to reduce emissions from buildings. It is not the only one and, as the member opposite mentioned, we also have the oil to heat pump program, which, in fact, just recently, was expanded. That is a really important program because it is going to help people, particularly people with lower incomes, to transition their form of energy away from oil, which is not only worse for the environment but is also much more expensive for them on a day-to-day basis and has more variables in its cost. They are able to then have, effectively, free heat pumps as part of this program, where provinces are actually working with us and setting up bilateral agreements. I think we should also talk about some of the other programs that our government has worked on to help with reducing emissions from buildings. In fact, the built environment across our country is the third-largest source of emissions in our country. It is a really important piece to tackle. In my home city of Toronto, the largest source of emissions is, in fact, our buildings. It is a bit of a surprise sometimes when I say that. We are working with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM. It has a green municipal fund that is supporting municipalities to do retrofits to buildings. For example, in Toronto, there was a tower renewal project that was recently funded that is actually going to be helping the buildings of people with lower income, so that those buildings can be retrofitted. It helps with affordability for the people who live in those homes but it also is reducing emissions at the same time. It is a win-win. There are other programs, as well, that have been funded through the FCM, to help people to get larger loans to make retrofits in Toronto. There was one of those programs through the FCM just recently. We also have programs that have been helping people in cities to retrofit community centres and other buildings through our infrastructure department. We can take many different steps at the same time. The built environment is very large and it is a large source of our emissions. I think it is important that we look at the totality of all of the programs that we are doing, because it is a commitment for us to take these actions.
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Context: House Hansard - 267 - Dec/13/23
Ms. Julie Dabrusin
  • Dec/13/23 7:08:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have already supported hundreds of thousands of Canadians across our country in their retrofits, through the greener home grants. It is supporting affordability. It is supporting these retrofits. As with all government programs, there is an allotted investment to support Canadians. There has been significant interest in the program, which is amazing. I want to also highlight, as we have this program, that the program officials continue to welcome new applications. They will continue to do so while the funding is on the table. The program is still there. It is still accepting applications and we are very committed to all of the programs across the suite that support reducing emissions from our built environment.
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