Canadian Greener Homes Grant | Still several months to wait to receive your cheque

Four months after the announcement of the premature end of the program, Quebec applicants for the Canada Greener Homes Grant are still having to wait to receive their cheque from the federal government. Although the waiting times have improved, Natural Resources Canada assures, hundreds of thousands of applications remain to be reviewed and approved.

Justine Proust and her partner had a heat pump installed and the attic of their home insulated in the fall of 2022.

A year earlier, the federal government had launched with great fanfare a $2.6 billion, seven-year program to encourage homeowners to improve the energy performance of their homes. Up to $5,000 was offered to each homeowner for building insulation, replacing doors and windows, installing solar panels or a heat pump. Given the success of this measure, Ottawa announced last February that no new applications would be added to the 500,000 already received.

At that time, Justine Proust was still waiting to receive the grant. The cheque would finally arrive in May, 16 months after the requested documents were sent. In the meantime, she made numerous calls and emails to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) customer service. “They would tell me: ‘We don’t have access to your file, I can only add a note to say that you are waiting.’ We have no follow-up, we don’t know how much we will receive or when,” she complains.

Last April, after many reminders, she was informed that her file was missing a consent form to sign that had supposedly been sent to her by email. She was adamant: she had never received this email. An experience similar to that of many owners, notes lawyer Pierre-Luc Mélançon.

A collective action in preparation

Having himself been affected by these long processing times that led him to initiate legal proceedings to receive his $5,000 grant, this Lévis lawyer filed a motion for authorization of a class action in the Federal Court last February on behalf of three plaintiffs. Last year, the broadcast of his story in a Radio-Canada article triggered an avalanche of calls to his office.

“It was not my initial intention for this to become a class action, but I have received so many calls and I have never stopped receiving them since February 2023,” he said, while inviting people who could be targeted by the action not to contact his office until the court has ruled on the request.

Compensation in interest as well as compensatory and punitive damages are being claimed for grant applicants who experienced “unreasonable delays in processing their file”, i.e. a wait exceeding 70 working days (40 days for processing the file and 30 days for issuing the cheque, the service standard announced by NRCan).

Longer delays for Quebec

Criticized for its slowness since the launch of the program, NRCan claimed in June 2022 to accelerate the payment of subsidies. The most recent data from 2023-2024 provided to The Press indicate that 93% of requests received through the national portal were processed within the timeframes set in the service standard.

In Quebec, each application must go through the provincial Rénoclimat program, which adds to the wait. Although Rénoclimat says it was able to pay its share of the subsidy within 11 weeks for 67% of the files in 2023, it is only at the end of this period that the files are sent to its federal partner, which was not able to provide us with precise data on its processing times for applications from Quebec.

Robin Librach, spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada, maintains that the evaluation of the file is completed “in 40 days or less, once the file is received by NRCan.”

However, the Quebec Ministry of the Environment, Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks (MELCCFP), which is responsible for the Rénoclimat program, reports much longer processing times. “Since the start of the initiative, Natural Resources Canada’s processing times have been approximately 39 weeks, to our knowledge,” notes Frédéric Fournier, spokesperson for the MELCCFP.

“The 40-day period may be longer if the Rénoclimat data was not sent on time or if it contains errors or omissions,” replies Shireen Ali, spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada.

In various Facebook groups, many owners complain about delays ranging from eight months to a year.

Diane Jalbert has been waiting since January for the cheque that will reimburse a significant portion of the $7,500 she paid to install a heat pump. “I received $1,100 from the province, but I’m still waiting for the cheque from the federal government,” she said in an interview. “I’m trying to find out where my file is, but Rénoclimat and Natural Resources Canada are passing the buck. In the meantime, you have to have the means to pay.”

“It’s a good thing to encourage people to do work, to install heat pumps, but to what extent has this program fueled cynicism about government programs?” asks Pierre-Luc Mélançon.