Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new funding initiative named Greener Homes on May 17 aimed at supporting energy-efficient home upgrades and creating energy advisor jobs in Canada.
The government partnered with Efficiency Canada, a national organization based at Carleton University’s Sustainability Research Center, to invest $10 million in recruiting and training energy advisors.
The initiative will work towards Canada’s goal to be emission-free by 2050 by providing 700,000 homeowners with grants of up to $5,000 to retrofit their homes with energy-efficient upgrades including updated heating equipment, insulation and heat-retaining windows.
Corey Diamond, the executive director of Efficiency Canada, said energy advisors trained by the initiative will help homeowners identify ways to minimize energy waste and save money. He added almost a quarter of Canadians currently struggle to pay for energy.
“We can begin the process of transforming our buildings into a major contributor of greenhouse gas emission reductions, while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and tackling the inequity that plagues many parts of this country,” Diamond said.
During the event, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan said homes would have priority for retrofitting over residential towers and that the improvements funded through the program could significantly decrease winter heating bills for homeowners.
In Ontario, heating bills cost an average of $96 per month. Average heating bill costs double in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
O’Regan said the program could also have positive environmental effects. With optimal energy efficiency, he said Canada could get one-third closer to its Paris Agreement goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
According to O’Regan, the long-term effects of reduced emissions from this initiative could have positive impacts for northern and Indigenous homeowners in Canada who have seen increased forest fires and flooding as a result of climate change.
“In Inuit communities just 200 kilometers [from] where I grew up, people are experiencing things their elders never did,” O’Regan said. “It’s not only alarming, it’s dangerous. Inuit communities have relied on thick ice to move […] this year, where ice would normally be a meter thick, it’s not even a foot thick.”
The funding for training energy advisors is also an investment in affirmative action to grow the workforce, according to Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough.
Qualtrough said the program intends to train underrepresented communities and bring marginalized groups into the workforce by focusing advertising towards Indigenous and remote communities, LGBTQ+ people and women. Qualtrough added specified applicants will be “given more weight” in admittance to the program.
Qualtrough said women make up only 15 per cent of the energy workforce sector, and this recruitment effort aims to foster an equitable recovery from the gendered wage gap emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic.
O’Regan said anyone should be able to become an energy advisor. Those with prior experience in the sector should be able to complete the testing in a week, he said, whereas those with no experience should expect to study for five to six weeks.
While Trudeau was slated to attend, he did not appear after his introductory comments at the beginning of the event and was not available for questions.
Featured image by Morgana Adby.
