Once more unto the breach.... In terms of priorities—I understand that this question also came up on Tuesday—I'd like to address specifically the notion of competing priorities and competing interests. You heard on Tuesday about the need for dramatically enhanced funding for cost-sharing in order to effectively conserve, and we're just talking about the national historic site component, which is probably about 700 places outside of federal ownership and is already oversubscribed.
To me, the context always depends on where you're sitting. If I'm looking at the 2016 federal budget and I see $65 million approved in that budget for a bicycle and hiking trail in Jasper National Park, and I think of the needs of.... If the conservation is just not taking place on things that people highly value across this country, then I say to myself that I think it really depends on where you are. I think sometimes we need to get down and look at where the money is actually being spent. When you do that, I think, it's not so much culture versus nature, and it's not so much tourism versus this or that. It's something else.
Now, on framing things so that people appreciate why this investment has benefits other than just straightforward conservation, I think that makes eminently good sense. For example, in the United States, there is a 20% tax credit for approved work that takes place on any national historic landmark. In fact, I think any building on the register is eligible to apply for that funding. They built in something that said to forget heritage for the moment; any building built before 1936 in the United States that is converted into affordable housing will automatically get a 10% tax credit.
That tax credit program in the United States is credited by a number of people with being instrumental in the rehabilitation of American cities. Many of you are much younger than I am, but I remember reading in the 1980s about all these American cities that were basket cases and would never recover. New York City and Provincetown and all of these places were dead, yet it was this rehabilitation tax credit program that started interesting entrepreneurs. The high-tech industry started moving into old buildings. There was this creation of that sort of thing. In fact, when Christina and I were working, Deloitte and Touche in the United States had a section of their big consulting firm that was designed to put places on the register so they'd be eligible for tax credits, because of the very positive impacts this rehabilitation was having on those communities.
I agree with you that framing is important, but I would like us always to think in these terms: when we're talking about the competing interests, it really depends on how you are actually spending that money.