Government Operations committee  I agree with the previous two statements and also with creating the revolving fund. I think that's a good one. That makes all kinds of economic sense. In terms of leadership you're our leaders, so lead away.

Government Operations committee  Let's start with the national effort first and that's where you create the leadership. Provinces have a lot of say in building codes, for sure, but I think the national standard should be there and the provinces should coordinate it, so you create some synergy across the country.

Government Operations committee  Well, just use fluorescent lighting. The federal government passed legislation to say no more T12s. You can't import. You can't manufacture. You have to move to T8s. That permeated across the country, and all kinds of lighting retrofits occurred because of it. There's one example

Government Operations committee  On that topic, they have. That's part of our business. I'm still changing out T12s. I can't believe I still find them in the system. We're doing two towers in Calgary right now. They're all T12s. They're not going to live with them, because they have to move to the new technology

Government Operations committee  Staying on lighting, there has been this whole debate about getting rid of incandescent lights and going to CFLs or LEDs. There could be leadership in those areas. In our business, for instance, with homes, we don't talk about furnaces any more. Forget furnaces; their life is lon

Government Operations committee  For the buildings you own, of course you need to take a strategic approach, but you start with an assessment: what is the building energy intensity of each of the facilities you own? You start with the worst. Say you have 100 buildings. The worst are the ones you attack first, bu

Government Operations committee  The city of Edmonton has one; the city of Toronto has one. I think the city of Toronto has $22 million; Edmonton's is small, $5 million. These kinds of revolving funds exist in New York. There are lots of examples of where they exist. The beauty of it is that you create, say, ha

Government Operations committee  Well, I have a lot of experience in that world, and it's tough. It's tough, if you're the tenant, to engage an ESCO, an energy service company, to do an energy performance contract; that has to be done by the owner. You have to say to the owner that either they upgrade the facili

Government Operations committee  I can add something. We do a lot of training and working with all the different people in charge of different parts of the buildings. You have facilities, capital planning, the operations people, and so forth. They deal with their responsibilities in silos, and they don't talk.

Government Operations committee  No, I said 20% to 40%, and it depends which ESCO or energy service company you're working with,.

Government Operations committee  Well, that's the historical premium. They've had to come down because of competition. But when you do an energy performance contract, you're buying insurance, and they put a premium on the retrofit. That's why it's more expensive.

Government Operations committee  First of all, you have buying power as the federal government, so when you approach whomever—Oxford, O&Y, or whomever—you're going to lease so much space, you've got buying power. You don't need a law. Laws would be nice, but you just say, “Here are the standards of perform

Government Operations committee  I can answer that. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Government Operations committee  It's Brian here. Let me add something in there. We just dealt with a facility like that in Calgary. Do we keep it or do we buy another one? What we did with that facility was a capital asset plan, looking at a 25-year horizon. There are 25 components in a building. What is the c

Government Operations committee  First, the money required to make changes is already in the system. It's going out the window. If you have inefficiency in the operations of your buildings, the money's there. What you do is capture those funds and capitalize them. You don't need new money; you already have it in