Improving building standards

As I was working in my garden today, I was thinking that, while I still enjoy it, I am starting to wonder how much longer I will be able to care for a house and a yard. Like many my age, I have been thinking about the condominium option here in Winnipeg.

I am a mother and a grandmother and I am also very concerned about climate change and the need to recognize that our emissions from coal, oil, and gas are warming the Earth. As a climate activist, I do not want to pollute. Yet as a condo purchaser, I would have no control over how the building is insulated, heated and cooled or how much energy it would take to do so.

When I moved to Winnipeg four years ago, I intended to buy a house and install a heat pump, which heats and cools a home using electricity only.

Before that purchase, I phoned Manitoba Hydro and was advised to buy a home built after 1985, when national standards were upgraded to require better insulation. That was no trouble for me, given I had already moved from a 1960s house into a new house in 1989 and even though the new home was larger, our gas bill was cut in half because of the added insulation.

That experience is why I suspect that when I eventually buy a condo, I will need to limit my search to newer buildings only.

It is discouraging to remember that in 2024 the province adopted the lowest tier for energy efficiency in building codes, a decision made by the Conservative government back in 2020.

It means that every building going up now, and until the next code change, is not being built or insulated as well as it could be. And it is far more expensive to retrofit a building afterward than to build it right the first time. We live in an area of extreme weather that is getting more extreme all the time, so this doesn’t make sense.

I recently learned that new national building standards were released in December 2025 and the province now has 18 months to decide whether to adopt them. In effect, the energy efficiency of new buildings people move into over the next decades will be locked in by a decision made right now. For the sake of our future homes in Manitoba, and for adapting to extreme weather, I am hoping the province chooses a plan to move to the highest tier in the near future.

As a condo buyer, I don’t get to decide how well-built or well-insulated my future building will be. That depends entirely on what the province required, or what the developer chose to provide beyond code requirements, at the time the condo was built.

It also matters to my pocketbook: I am on a more fixed income now and a poorly insulated building means higher heating and cooling costs for as long as I own the unit. Temperature swings also matter more as we age and a well-built building holds its temperature better through cold snaps, heat waves and power outages. This is exactly why regulation matters, because a consumer like me has no real protection otherwise.

I am old enough to remember the 1970s oil shocks, which taught us that energy security can’t be taken for granted. Real policy changes followed: home insulation incentives, new fuel-efficiency standards for cars, a push toward buildings that use less energy. I lived through that shift, from assuming energy would always be available to understanding it as something we have to plan for.

That is exactly the mindset this decision is asking Manitoba to have now.

It’s genuinely hard to understand why Manitoba wouldn’t move on the fastest reasonable timeline.

We need to adopt the higher tiers now and work with the federal government so the building industry has time to gain the training and capacity to meet them. Waiting until the deadline will only mean more delays later.

In a few years, when I am ready to buy a condo, my hope is that well-insulated, net-zero housing will be available, housing that helps me adapt to the extreme weather of the future and building codes are what will help make that a reality. Jean Clipsham writes from Winnipeg.