Energy Poverty Strategy
An Act to establish a national strategy to end energy poverty
Summary
- Requires the Minister of the Environment to develop, within two years, a national strategy to eliminate energy poverty with clear metrics and interim targets.
- Directs the strategy to include supports like access to energy-efficiency upgrades, affordability measures, consumer protections, and actions to improve housing energy performance and health.
- Promotes building energy transparency by adopting standardized performance information and disclosure at sale or lease, and collaborates toward minimum energy performance standards for rental and social housing.
- Mandates broad consultations with provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous governments, utilities, housing providers, advocates, experts, skilled trades, and people with lived experience.
- Establishes an unpaid advisory council (up to 15 members) to advise on the strategy and requires public tabling and online publication of the strategy and five-year progress reports.
Builder Assessment
The bill’s goal is worthy, but it primarily creates new planning, advisory, and reporting structures and contemplates added disclosure and performance requirements that risk increased compliance costs. It lacks concrete, pro-growth, market-based tools or streamlining that would materially boost productivity or investment at scale.
- Introduces an advisory council and recurring reports without clear cost controls, streamlining commitments, or regulatory sunset provisions.
- Requires the strategy to promote energy performance disclosure at sale/lease and collaboration toward minimum rental standards, which could add red tape and upgrade costs, risking rent hikes or reduced housing supply.
- No commitment to harmonization, mutual recognition, or a single-window model to avoid duplication across jurisdictions.
- Misses pro-investment tools (e.g., immediate expensing/accelerated CCA for retrofits, performance-based rebates) that crowd in private capital and spur innovation.
- Improve by focusing on technology-neutral, performance-based incentives, voluntary national model standards with provincial opt-in, phased timelines tied to cost-benefit thresholds, and protections to maintain tenant affordability and grid reliability.
- Add a regulatory budget and one-in, two-out rule, require independent cost-benefit audits, and tie the strategy to measurable reductions in household bills and administrative burden.
Question Period Cards
What is the projected cost to households and landlords of the new energy performance disclosures and the push toward minimum efficiency standards in rentals and social housing, and how will the government prevent rent increases or unit loss as a result?
How will the minister avoid duplication with provincial and municipal efficiency programs and building codes, and will the strategy commit to harmonized national standards and a single-window process for homeowners and businesses?
Before tabling the strategy, will the minister publish a regulatory impact analysis with measurable targets for reducing average household energy bills and timelines, and commit that any new requirements meet a no-net-new-paperwork rule for small businesses?
Principles Analysis
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Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.
May lower household energy costs and improve health, but relies on planning rather than direct growth or productivity levers, so overall impact is uncertain.
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Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).
Creates a strategy, recurring reports, and an advisory council while promoting new disclosure and efficiency standards that are likely to increase compliance burdens.
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Drive national productivity and global competitiveness, including removing interprovincial trade barriers and improving labour mobility (one country, one market).
Encourages coordination and common metrics but does not remove internal trade barriers or improve labour mobility.
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Grow exports of Canadian products and resources, and move up the value chain by processing resources domestically rather than exporting them raw.
Focuses on household energy use and housing stock performance, not on resource development or export growth.
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Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.
References access to upgrades and research, but provides no direct incentives or permitting reform; potential mandates could deter or delay private investment.
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Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).
Adds planning, advisory, and reporting layers without commitments to streamline processes or reduce administrative costs.
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Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.
Does not address taxation.
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Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.
Sets an ambitious goal to end energy poverty, but relies on a planning exercise rather than transformative economic reforms.
Did we get the builder vote wrong?
Email [email protected]
PartySenate
StatusAt second reading in the Senate
Last updatedN/A
Parliament45