Good morning, everybody. Thank you for this opportunity today.

CHBA is the voice of the residential construction industry in Canada, with more than 8,500 member companies from coast to coast. Our industry is responsible for more than 1.5 million jobs, $107 billion in wages and $211 billion in economic activity.

Our members are the builders, developers, renovators and all the associated trades and services that build and renovate Canada's homes and communities across the country. We share the concern and desire for more resilient homes and communities and have been actively engaged on this file for years.

With the climate change crisis upon us, we are also challenged with another crisis: housing affordability and the associated dramatic lack of housing stock in Canada. Coordinated government action is needed to address these simultaneously, to make sure that we cover climate change and housing affordability at the same time.

The Lytton fire, the Barrie tornado, flooding in many regions of Canada and the Calgary hailstorm have all been chilling reminders that homes and buildings face challenges with extreme weather events. When we see the damage from extreme weather events like these, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that building codes must be updated immediately. It is common that when a crisis occurs, the first thing that some people think of is that we need to regulate. While regulation can be part of the tool box, it needs to be thought through carefully, as there are other measures that should come first and that may better address the problem, and in a less costly fashion. Over-regulation can quickly drive up costs, when our housing crisis can't afford it.

Furthermore, many effective measures to protect homes against extreme climate events are not related to construction of individual housing units, but to things such as natural infrastructure upgrades, as we've heard, community emergency planning and yard maintenance and landscaping. Houses need to be resistant to the risks relevant to their particular location. We also have 16 million existing housing units in Canada that need to be considered.

What we need right now are the right, proven market-based solutions, and we need to ensure those are affordable. If not, we need to innovate to find cost-effective solutions. It is also critical that regulation not be rushed without proper cross-disciplinary analysis: We don't want to create risks through unintended consequences. This is doubly true when it comes to municipalities. We should not be implementing, with the best of intentions, a hodgepodge of bylaws on construction and renovation that can easily lead to unintended problems.

To find the right solutions, CHBA has been working with other organizations to produce guidance for Canadians on resilience with respect to their homes. We have helped to develop wildfire resistance guidelines. We've worked with CSA and other groups for flooding and wind resistance guidelines and are continually engaging in the building code process, where all the issues and the building science need to come together in a complete house-as-a-system approach.

Through these activities, we have learned that there are things that can be done now, but there is also much work that we still need to do. As industry and governments, we need to de-risk and address the gaps in current solutions, such as how to manage risks during the construction process and how to find solutions that are affordable for Canadians, remembering that codes and standards apply to affordable and social housing as well.

Most important, there's much that needs to be done at the infrastructure level first. We know how to make housing more resilient to extreme weather events, but if the infrastructure is not protecting the homes from the significant effects of those first, measures that can be applied to homes can be meaningless. For example, without forest management, protecting homes from wildfire might be futile. If there are no catch basins, flood protection such as using things like back-flow valves in basements will have limited effects.

Thinking beyond traditional core infrastructure such as roads, bridges, public transit and water systems, we also need to consider the electrical grid and energy system. Resilient and sustainable communities need to be powered by a resilient energy infrastructure. We also need to remove regulatory and technical barriers that currently hinder the installation of solar energy and solar storage solutions, for example, which will enable homes to operate independently.

We also need to consider communications infrastructure. This is important for aging in place and for working from home, which are growing trends in Canada that can contribute to sustainable communities.

We have two simultaneous crises: climate change and housing affordability. For housing, we can make a real difference if we take coordinated action with respect to both at the same time.

First, and most importantly, we need to adapt municipal infrastructure to protect our homes and communities from the significant effects of extreme climate events. We need to collect, analyze and make location-specific climate data available so that we can target resources towards communities facing the most urgent and critical risk. We also need to ensure that we bolster our construction for the right risks in the right places, and don't regulate, in a blanket form, in areas that don't warrant the added cost.

Second, with regional data and variances embedded in the national guidelines, we need to promote consistent application at the municipal level to streamline resiliency practices and reduce friction and confusion created by inconsistent local rules. This can be done by first focusing resources on voluntary programs. That will allow us to de-risk potential solutions, address gaps, increase industry capacity, and build awareness among homebuyers and homeowners. In this way, we can promote the implementation of cost-effective solutions at scale, and codes and standards can follow if and as appropriate.

Thanks a lot. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

Transcript

Discussions (0)