Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
My name is Andrea Gabor, and I am the president of the Canadian Institute of Planners. I'm accompanied by David Wise, who is the chair of our planning advisory committee. Unfortunately, Steven Brasier, our executive director, is unable to join us today.
We're very pleased to have been invited to speak to your committee and we have prepared a brief presentation to respond to some of the questions you put forward to us. We have brought some examples of urban conservation that respond to some of the opportunities that Mr. Bienenstock has talked about in terms of making them active places.
I would like to take a minute to tell you about our organization. The Canadian Institute of Planners is the national voice of Canada's planning profession. We've been in place since 1919, and we've been dedicated to the advancement of responsible planning throughout Canada. We address matters around professional standards, planning practice, and public policy, both domestically and globally. We undertake research on climate change and sustainability.
We have about 7,000 members working at the local, regional, provincial, and national levels of government, or as private sector consultants, as David and I are. A lot of our work bears on the design, management, and regulation of sustainable community development.
When you first talked to us about urban conservation, we said to ourselves, “What do they mean, exactly?” David is going to interpret for you what we think it means.