Picture this: You’re at the grocery story choosing between two bags of chips. One says “30 per cent less fat!†while the other boasts “40 per cent less fat!†Easy choice — you grab the 40 per cent bag, feeling pretty good about your healthy decision.
Except, of course, you have no idea what either bag is comparing itself to. Less fat than what? The original recipe? Some mystery chip they invented just to make their numbers look good? For all you know, the “30 per cent less†chips could be referring to the 40 per cent bag.
Now imagine making the same choice, but instead of snacks, you’re talking about the thousands of new homes Canada desperately needs to build. And instead of a few dollars, you’re talking about billions in government funding and heating bills that will affect families for decades.
Welcome to Canada’s building efficiency problem.
Right now, Canada is pushing hard to ramp up housing. Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised billions in funding and faster permits to get the job done. But here’s one thing getting lost: we’re still measuring the efficiency of new buildings the way snack brands market empty nutritional claims.
Everything is “30 per cent better than code†or “50 per cent more efficient than standard†— but nobody really knows what that baseline is.
Maybe a developer is comparing their new apartment to a drafty 1970s building. Maybe they’re comparing it to the average of all existing buildings. Or maybe they’ve invented a fictional building designed as required by code just to make their real one look good.
This may sound like an industry semantics issue, but it directly impacts regular people. When a new condo is said to be “60 per cent more efficient,†it would be natural to assume it uses less energy than one that’s “40 per cent more efficient.†But that’s not necessarily true. The “60 per cent better†building might actually cost more to heat and produce more carbon emissions. Without consistent baselines, the percentages are basically meaningless
To confuse matters further, as building codes improve — whether at the local, provincial, or federal level — it becomes harder to hit these percentage targets. So newer, more efficient buildings end up looking worse on paper than older, less efficient ones.
This isn’t just a matter of optics, but of outcomes. Developers are making multimillion-dollar decisions based on “better than†metrics. Cities are writing climate policies around them. Banks are deciding which projects to fund based on environmental performance that may not reflect reality. Even if the numbers mean very little, the funding decisions are very real.
The solution is simple: Regulators need to measure real things, like how much energy does a building actually use per year? What is its actual carbon footprint?
When a person sets out to buy a car, they don’t want to hear it has “30 per cent better mileage than a standard vehicle†— they want a real number, like “six litres per 100 km,†that they can compare and use to calculate actual costs.
For buildings, we need the same thing: total energy use per square foot, heating requirements, and carbon emissions. Real, measurable numbers you can actually compare.
The good news is that parts of Canada are already fixing this. Some jurisdictions in Ontario and British Columbia are moving toward real measurements instead of vague “better than†claims. Scaling these initiatives nationally would allow governments to tie funding to real performance, not vague comparisons. It would give developers clearer targets and it would help ensure that public dollars are going to housing that’s both climate-resilient and cost-effective.
This doesn’t mean every building needs solar panels, geothermal heating or two feet of insulation. Going overboard can actually increase carbon footprints and drive up costs — the last thing we need in a housing crisis.
The goal is buildings that are energy efficient, cost-effective and designed to withstand the climate of the future. But to do this, we need meaningful metrics.
Canada has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape its built environment, and do it right. But if we keep taking the potato-chips approach to measuring building performance — using vague claims that don’t mean what they imply — we’ll end up with buildings that look good on paper but don’t perform over the long-term.
Let’s measure real energy use, real emissions, real costs. When you’re spending billions to house millions, you want to know exactly what you’re getting — not just that it’s “better than†something else.
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