The summit focused on Canada’s long-term electricity strategy and its implications for housing, electrification, and infrastructure planning. Discussion Themes Included:

Financing grid expansion: Participants debated whether electrification will increase consumer costs through major infrastructure investments, or whether innovative financing tools could support grid growth while limiting rate impacts.

AI and data centres: Their rapidly growing electricity demand is increasingly shaping grid planning. Concerns were raised that competition for infrastructure could eventually affect residential development if capacity is not expanded strategically.

CHBA emphasized that regulations are not keeping pace with innovation. Technologies such as smart electrical panels, thermal storage water heaters, and demand-management controls can reduce peak loads and avoid costly service upgrades, yet many are not well supported in current regulatory frameworks. Labour shortages, particularly in skilled trades needed for heat-pump deployment, were identified as a potential barrier to electrification.

Modelling assumptions: Participants questioned assumptions behind projections that Canada’s grid must double in size. CHBA noted that increasingly efficient new homes, retrofits, and demand-management technologies may reduce future residential demand and should be reflected in modelling.

Workshop: CHBA encouraged NRCan to sponsor a national workshop showcasing ON and BC approaches to science-based connection sizing that utilize actual load data and controls to avoid unnecessary infrastructure upgrades.

Feedback: NRCan indicated that feedback on its draft electricity strategy is requested by July, particularly on financing tools and program design. They also highlighted a policy shift toward supporting cost efficiency, innovation, and deployment potential, over GHG reductions.

Key actions: CHBA intends to make a submission encouraging them to pursue several follow-up actions, including a policy round-table workshop per above, and a separate research effort on Data Centres and ways to make them positive for the grid (eg: capturing the heat into thermal networks to subsidize heating for affordable housing).

Contact Derek Satnik for more information: Derek.Satnik@chba.ca