Over the last two years, Natural Resources Canada has undertaken extensive public and industry engagement to develop the Canada Green Buildings Strategy (CGBS) with the aim to “mobilize national action to transform markets and reduce costs” to meet building sector carbon reduction targets.
This paper offers the following recommendations on how the CGBS can help create safer, healthier, more resilient buildings, and stimulate industry and market transformation through deep retrofits:
- Public investments in the form of incentive and subsidy programs should be significantly increased to leverage private capital and provide support for households that need it most.
- Retrofit funding programs should be consolidated into a net-zero-over-time offering that allows owners to make capital investments in phases.
- Indigenous communities and remote communities must be integrally connected in the transition and their unique needs and contexts addressed.
- The federal government should update its energy efficiency regulations to align with net-zero goals.
- Standards across all provinces and territories should be harmonized and enforced through creation of a federal backstop.
- A centralized authority should be responsible for setting retrofit and resilience targets for homes and buildings and be accountable for meeting them.
