After identifying that the Eco-Energy Retrofit Homes Program would be available to March 2011, Ottawa announced today that it would no longer accept applications to book pre-retrofit evaluations after midnight on March 31, 2010. This means that anyone who has not already booked an evaluation is no longer eligible for a rebate.

The program provided homeowners with incentives to have their homes evaluated for energy efficiency, and then perform upgrades to improve their rating. This is even more disturbing since the Home Renovation Tax Credit was recently extinguished.

“We're disappointed by this decision,” says Steve Koch, executive director of the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association, Canada. “This was a wonderful program that did exactly what it was supposed to do and more. It was one of the government's most impactful programs to deal with climate change and energy efficiency. Homeowners were rewarded for making their homes more energy efficient, and hundreds of green jobs were created.”

Cancelling it will make energy efficient upgrades less accessible, and probably put several hundred energy auditors out of work.

“At a time when the economy is just beginning to recover from a major recession, the government has threatened to put an entire industry out of work.”

Provincial governments have been matching Ottawa's incentives with their own retrofit programs, and developing mandatory labelling to help educate and motivate consumers to develop an energy efficient home.

“We now have to look to Premiers like Dalton McGuinty [of Ontario] to enact the mandatory labelling in order to support the auditors and the industry,” says Koch.