text: While encouraging energy efficient homes is an admirable goal, leaving so much of the code open-ended is likely going to cause problems.
  From the article, it sounds like even the term "major life-cycle event" is pretty much undefined.
  I can see an over-zealous provincial government defining replacement of a broken window as a "major life-cycle event" which could mean the cost of fixing that 1 broken window goes from $200 to $20,000 because now the homeowner is required to replace all the windows.
  In this hypothetical case, the homeowner who can't afford $20,000 would just tape up the broken window, which, of course, results in a less energy efficient house.