—ours.
This was very much a first crack at thinking about it. I hope everybody has had a chance to look at it. I really invite comments. I assume that at some point we're going to be turning it over to the analysts and to the clerk to make it happen.
As I said, I had a small group who have been involved in this field for a number of decades. What we looked at was really six sessions, and we can decide if we want to expand or contract that.
The first one is very much just trying to lay the foundation for the study, which is looking at the existing state of heritage legislation rules in Canada. Parks Canada plays a lead role for built heritage within the federal public service, so we will have the person who heads up that program. They administer the federal heritage buildings review office and other programs. Then there's the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Dr. Alway has been with that organization for years. This is to try to get a sense of what the state of built heritage is, legislation regulation, and other programs.
The second is starting to explore some of the benefits and impediments to built heritage programs within Canada. I tried looking at what the financial, environmental, and social benefits are, and then at what some of the impediments are to achieving these objectives within society.
On the third one, we talked about having international best practices. This was identifying who would have comparable federal structures in Canada. Britain has some great things happening, as do many European countries, but they don't have the same kind of division of powers that we have in Canada. It was felt that the Americans and the Australians were probably the closest. If the committee wants, we could also look at other ones and see if they would apply to a Canadian context.
There is a session on indigenous heritage. Although there's not a lot of built heritage, there's archeological and cultural heritage. There seems to be a bit of a void in terms of how we're dealing with indigenous communities and the protection of their very rich history.
There's a session on financial and tax incentives. The thought is that this is where we could bring in the Van Loan piece, to give it some context within what's happening at the federal level.
Then we have contributions and grant programs, a bit of a different beast from the tax incentives.
That's what I had come up with. If we had a minute now just to throw it out, then—if there are any real gaps in terms of what people would like to see—we could give direction to the clerk and analysts as we work on organizing it.