Anxious homeowners were checking with their window installers Wednesday, after incoming premier Doug Ford announced he was cancelling the Green Ontario Fund.

Jimm Fox, marketing director for Nordik Windows and other brands sold in the Toronto and Ottawa areas, said installers such as his company had received phone calls from people checking to see if they still qualified for up to $5,000 under the now-cancelled rebate program.

The new Progressive Conservative government has set an Aug. 31 deadline for the installation of windows in order to qualify for the rebates, but some consumers will be left in the lurch.

The government will honour rebate applications that have already been submitted and those filed by Sept. 30 on work done no later than Aug. 31, according to the program’s website.

But the lead time for window installation tends to be 15 to 20 weeks, said Fox. If the government sticks to its Aug. 31 deadline, some customers who have planned for fall installation won’t qualify.

“We’re doing our best to encourage the government to extend the deadline,” he said. “We’re also doing our best to manage installations within the stated time period. It’s causing a huge challenge for us.”

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The $377-million Green ON rebate fund was introduced by the Liberal government last year as a climate change initiative to encourage environmental building upgrades such as windows, thermostats, heat pumps and insulation. Ford announced Tuesday that the fund was being cancelled as part of the elimination of the cap-and-trade policy that was financing the program.

The fund has been a boon to Ontario’s window and door business, which is worth about $1 billion annually, but it has caused an “artificial bubble” in that sector, said Fox. Consumers, who are prone to delay a costly renovation like replacement windows, saw the rebates as an incentive to get the work done. So window companies have been swamped with demand from building owners wanting to take advantage of Green ON.

Rebate programs are always popular and Green ON was a particularly rich one. But rebates also disrupt the normal flow of sales, said Fox.

“They cause a bubble and then you get a corresponding trough after the program ends,” he said.

Fox did not rule out job losses when Green ON expires. But the fund was always going to end, he said. Likely, it would have been cancelled in the fall when the funds ran out.

Windows were among the pricier items that qualified for rebates, but other upgrades such as thermostats, insulation and heat pumps were also boosting the Toronto region’s $5.9 billion annual renovation business, said Samuel Lapidus.

Lapidus is president of Keystone Ridge Developments, a renovator and customer builder, and chair of the Renovator and Custom Builders Council of the Building Industry and Land Development Association.

The cancellation of Green ON “really just takes away tools to achieve higher energy-efficient homes,” he said.

Consumers will make up the loss by turning to less efficient windows and other products.

“The homeowner will go with the cheap, seven-day programmable (thermostat), but not the one the one that monitors your activity and reprograms itself,” he said.

The fund has not created new projects, but it has extended some renovations, creating employment, said Lapidus.

“It kept me on the job site weeks longer. It meant I was putting food on the table of many people because there were more people involved in the work,” he said.

The province could put that money back in consumers’ pockets by enforcing the deadlines for building permits in renovations, said Lapidus.

“A residential renovation (permit) must be issued within 10 business days and the municipalities are not living up to that,” he said.

Steve Dyck, president of Guelph Solar, said he is “thrilled” that the Green ON program is being eliminated because in created instability in his sector.

The Liberal government announced that it was going to include solar panels as part of the Green ON rebates. So consumers waited for that to happen, but it never did, he said.

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“It was incredibly damaging to our industry to announce something and they didn’t actually have anything figured out,” said Dyck.

The Star was unable to get confirmation from the government by deadline whether rebates have been issued for solar panel installations.

“People can now decide if they’re just going to continue paying their electric bill or they can say, ‘I’m going to stay connected to the grid but I’m going to generate my own electricity and use the grid as my battery,” said Dyck, who has installed panels in about 500 homes since he started the business in 2009.

He said the government should price carbon and return the proceeds directly to consumers. Low-income residents could use the money to live; middle-income people could decide to make lower carbon choices, and affluent people and businesses would be incented to change their habits to avoid the expense of carbon pricing.