Efficiency Canada joins Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at announcement of a $10 million investment in training for new energy advisors

New program will create new low-carbon jobs and help Canadians across the country reduce their home energy bills by improving energy efficiency in their homes.

Efficiency Canada’s executive director Corey Diamond joined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Honourable Seamus O’Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, and Cindy Gareau of the Canadian Associations of Certified Energy Advisors in an announcement launching a call for proposals to create energy advisor jobs through the federal government’s $2.6 billion green retrofit program.

This call for proposals is a $10 million commitment to recruit, train, and mentor up to 2,000 new energy advisors across the country to support the Canada Greener Homes Grant, which will provide as many as 700,000 grants of up to $5,000 each to help homeowners make energy-efficient improvements to their homes, supported by an EnerGuide evaluation. An EnerGuide home evaluation gives homeowners a better understanding of how their home uses energy now – and identifies retrofits to help improve energy efficiency.

• Read the press release from the Government of Canada

Efficiency Canada — housed at Carleton University’s Sustainable Energy Research Centre — has benchmarked the number of energy advisors in Canada in its annual Provincial Energy Efficiency Scorecard, and also worked to promote energy advisor careers.

Efficiency Canada’s policy director Dr Brendan Haley made comments on the announcement on Twitter.

Corey Diamond’s full remarks from the announcement can be found below.

Full transcribed remarks by Corey Diamond, Efficiency Canada

Thank you Cindy and thank you Prime Minister Trudeau, Honourable Ministers O’Regan and Qualtrough for your great remarks. And thank you for all of your service over the past 15 months, helping Canada wade through these unprecedented times.

My name is Corey Diamond (and I’m calling in from Toronto) and I am the executive director of Efficiency Canada, the national voice for an energy efficient economy. Based at Carleton University, Efficiency Canada advocates for policies that will help Canada maximize the benefits of energy efficiency – to support a sustainable environment, a productive economy and a just and equitable society.

That’s why I’m thrilled to be part of this announcement. 

I could spend my three minutes giving you stats that prove why energy efficiency policies and investment are the right path. I could tell you about how it’s impossible for Canada to meet its international climate commitments without reducing the amount of energy waste across the country. Or about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are created when we do this. Or the way it helps the 22% of Canadians struggling to pay their energy bills every month.

But instead, I’m going to tell you two stories. Stories that highlight how investments like the one  announced today affect real people, in communities across this country. Stories that show us that an investment in developing the green workforce are as important as investing in programs and policy implementation. Stories that show us the pure essence of what we call Our Human Energy.

The first story is about Shawna Henderson. Shawna is the founder and CEO of the training company Blue House Energy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is a veteran in the energy efficiency space, having worked in the industry since 1991. In 2001, as a single mother, she began training people in energy efficiency and related construction fields, driving herself and her kids around her home province talking to anyone that would listen about the benefits of saving energy. She eventually decided to take her know-how online and launched Blue House Energy’s education platform in 2012. She is known across the country now as an expert energy advisor, passing her knowledge down to the next generation of energy advisors with a staff of 9.

My second story is about Jordyn Burnouf, a member of Northern Saskatchewan’s Black Lake First Nation, who grew up in a Métis community. As Senior Advisor with Medicine Rope Strategies, she works with local governments and nonprofits to create more opportunities for Indigenous people. 

Jordyn is one of 20 young leaders in the 20/20 Catalysts program from Indigenous Clean Energy — a capacity-building program for Indigenous individuals from communities and organizations across Canada.

Currently, she’s leading a project that will upgrade the energy efficiency performance of homes in Île-à-la-Crosse, her rural Saskatchewan community of about 1,300 people. As she says “All of the local contractors that already exist in our community, we’re going to train them first to do the audits, and then they’ll go in and do the retrofit work.”

Shawna and Jordyn are two examples of the thousands of people working in the energy efficiency sector. People who wake up every day with a purpose and passion to drive a positive impact in everything they do. People who represent not just the future of the Canadian workforce, but also the present. 

With a continued investment in developing the workforce required to retrofit every building in this country over the next 3 decades, we can bring thousands more people like Shawna and Jordyn into the fold. We can inspire people to think of energy efficiency as a safe landing place to pursue a purposeful and exciting career. And we can begin the process of transforming 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. So let’s get on with it!

Thank you.

About Efficiency Canada

Efficiency Canada is the national voice for an energy efficient economy. We envision a future where Canada uses energy efficiency to its fullest potential. This means maximizing the benefits of energy efficiency resulting in a sustainable environment, a productive economy, and a just and equitable society.

Efficiency Canada is housed at Carleton University’s Sustainable Energy Research Centre, which is located on the traditional unceded territories of the Algonquin nation.