One comment I have just on the Vancouver report is, did they miss anything there? They had tax incentives, subsidies, grants, and loans as well. In some ways I think it is important to look at each individual approach. As I noted in my remarks, part of it is who exactly you want to be providing an incentive to, and that will in some ways determine whether you go the grant route or the tax route. They both have a financial impact.
You have more flexibility in the context of setting up a grant program. You see that at the municipal levels. Even in Ottawa there are some small grants available for heritage. We had the federal program for a number of years that, again, went the grant route. Part of it is whether you can work with other levels of government on some of this. Can you demonstrate leadership in some of that?
When you go the tax route, then you are focusing more on commercial buildings as opposed to other sources. What is enlightening is the interest in a variety of commercial operations. People recognize that there is a benefit, that there are occupants who want heritage. Is there an education component as well, in terms of encouraging people to think outside the box and to think about new ways of using heritage buildings?
The challenge too, given that there is a large stock of potential heritage buildings that would be helpful for preservation, is that they can also give a very large bill, so again, that is a concern in terms of focus and what the priorities are. One of the challenges in the tax area is that you have to define all those things up front, and if you get it wrong, if all of a sudden you have defined a very large amount, a large base, much bigger than you expected, you can have a very large tax expenditure related to that.
With a grant program you have a sense as to how things are going. You have better management activity.
Those are some.... It would be helpful to go through them all and to list the pros and cons. The National Trust has done some of that. You may want to come back to that as well.