Canada announces investment to retrofit 1 million homes
October 8, 2026 — Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced details on his promise to retrofit one million homes. It includes consistent support for multi-unit residential retrofits through mortgage insurance strategies and an expanded mandate for the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
It also includes renewed funding for the Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative, which finds new ways to streamline, modernize and scale retrofits. This is a policy that can create systemic change.
A new heat pump rebate, with a quick application process, is an important response to the significant rise in furnace oil prices.
However, it is disingenuous for the government to claim that a small heat pump grant will be largely responsible for meeting the government’s goal to retrofit one million homes.
Effective retrofits include building envelope improvements and energy management systems that deliver lower bills no matter what heating system a house uses and improve whole-building performance so heat pumps actually work well.
The lack of a systemic approach to single-family home upgrades, using multiple energy efficiency and demand-management solutions, puts Canadians at risk of bad advice on how to reduce bills and increased electricity system costs.
The approach the government has taken with the Canada Infrastructure Bank — supporting platforms that deliver retrofit services and financing and then recycling this capital to accomplish more retrofits — can also work for homeowners, and is working in places like Australia, Michigan, and Connecticut.
The one-million retrofit target is only six per cent of the country’s building stock, yet the government seems to have focused more on meeting this arbitrary target than creating a smart strategy to upgrade all of Canada’s homes for the future.
Relevant resources
How Federal Policy Can Transform Building Retrofits in Canada calls for transitioning the Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative and the Greener Neighbourhoods Pilot Program into mission-based teams with clear mission-oriented objectives to improve retrofit productivity, use modernized methods of construction, and support Canadian businesses and technologies.
“How to retrofit 1 million homes” proposes a National Home Energy Performance Fund that would deploy and recycle public capital to make financing available to Canadians, avoid boom-bust incentives, and create retrofit business models that would attract sustained investment.
Contact: media@efficiencycanada.org