WESTON: A few green renovations House plans leak

Greg Weston is a for CBC investigative journalist and a regular political commentator on CBC Radio and television. As an Ottawa-based national affairs columnist, he assigned the Governments of all stripes for more than three decades. His investigative work has won awards, including the coveted Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism. He is also the author of two books bestseller, "Reign of error" and "The stopwatch Gang."

Conservatives offer grants of up to $5, 000Liberals offers grants of up to $2, 025Conservative plan is a plan yearLiberal runs at least plan 2017Liberal covers half of audit costBack of accessibility links

If the most recent campaign promises are to be believed, any party won the current federal election, owners will still be once obtain government grants to help protect their homes.

The Government of Stephen Harper is promising to resurrect the hugely popular ecoEnergy Retrofit - program he killed last year, and the Liberals and new Democrats are now committed to similar schemes.

But the owners enticed by the lavish election promises money for green makeover can discover that not all hot air on this issue is what is leakage of Attica.

Like all the home-reno deals, there are many small characters in the proposals the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The program that the Conservatives are promising to revive, for example, will give owners up to $5,000 in grants for everything from the isolation of new Windows, doors and furnaces high-efficiency.

The grants would be fixed and cover only a fraction of the overall price - for example, Government grants to replace a window of the costs of hundreds of dollars would be $40.

Which allows to explain why the claim mean owner under the program since its launch in 2007 was only about $1,300.

There is an another capture: owner seeking a grant would have first to pay for a professional home inspection, called an energy audit, which generally cost about $400.

Now for the election promises.

The Conservatives are promising to put some $ 400 million boost program, enough to help the country around 307,000 owners.

Small print is that the Harper Government re-elected would extend only the program for one year, and there is virtually no chance it will benefit close to that many people in that short time.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff speaks at Ottawa on 3 April, after the release of the platform of his party. It includes a home renovation tax credit to promote energy-efficient homes. CBC

Government figures show that even when the program was executed at its peak in 2009, it is only about 200 000 owners.

And it is certainly not at its peak now.

The Conservative Government has begun to extinguish a year ago, and most of professional home inspectors perform compulsory energy performance audits is already long to other businesses.

A Conservative Government would be lucky just to get backup and running program in the period of one year they give, much less help to renovate a House more than 300 000.

Energy program home-as promised by the Liberals is better for homeowners averages in a certain way and more likely to achieve its objectives.

The liberal regime was to last until 2017 at least and would pay 15 per cent of the actual costs of home energy retrofits up to a total of $13,500.

It is a maximum of $2,025 in grants, to the limit of $5,000 under the conservative regime.

But the Liberals say their plan would be much more flexible for the owners that the conservative version, and in most cases limits do not count if the average claim is only about $1,300.

Bonus, the liberal program would also pay half the cost of compulsory energy-home inspection.

The Liberals argue that their plan will assist in renovating homes of 1 million over five years at a cost of 400 million dollars a year, the same that the Conservatives are promising for their one-year program.

With the Liberals targeting average 200,000 homes per year, their renovation plan would be million budget if everyone claimed the maximum of $2,025 in grants, plus one another about $200 for half the cost of home inspection.

However, if the average claim remained about $1,300, the liberal program could well achieve its goals with a lot of money over.

Bottom line: for medium-sized owners, the liberal plan would provide benefits similar to much more extreme people on a much longer period than would the promised conservative regime better adapted to the ladies and makeovers.

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