Environment Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2017

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Brown, you talked about the historic tax credit. Can you briefly tell us how that works? What percentage of a project is benefiting from that kind of credit? You also mentioned layering this over state initiatives. Perhaps you could dig into that a bit for us.

[David Brown]

I'd be glad to. In the U.S., the tax incentive is for 20% of qualified rehabilitation expenses. Oftentimes there's a state credit. I think in 37 of the 50 states there are state credits, which generally provide another 10%, maybe 15%, against state tax liabilities as well. Often these credits can also be twinned with a low-income housing credit, a solar credit, or other kinds of credit to bring more capital to a project in an area where there's a difference between the cost of renovating the building and what a conventional banker would be willing to put into that project.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Perfect timing.

Next up is Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Brown. I understand that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has about 75,000 members, a separate and active youth corps, and funding that's entirely private.

How would we set up something like that in Canada?

[David Brown]

We do have 75,000 traditional members. We also have up to one million people who work with us on advocacy issues and the like. You have a Canadian National Trust. We were chartered by Congress, but we have been totally privately funded since 1995, and we bring in revenue from a variety of different sources. For 30 years, we did receive funding from the federal government, which was actually very helpful in getting our organization up and providing the kind of foundation that would help us grow.

One thing to think about regarding a similar organization, the National Trust for Canada, is for the government to help for a period of time and provide some funding for that organization to help it build support. One of the reasons we were chartered by Congress was to build public support for preservation and heritage conservation. That's a very important piece. We also benefit from being a non-profit organization, so we don't pay federal taxes. I'm sure the situation is similar in Canada, but that's important.

The other thing that the government can do is find ways for the programs that worked best for government to collaborate and then to find ways to support the private sector work that a group like the National Trust performs. I think this would be important as part of your study looking at the various roles of the public sector and the private sector and the different levels of public sector.

A lot of preservation happens at the local level, and it is driven by municipal governments. One of the things we've done recently is work in various cities looking at the barriers to rehabilitation of historic buildings and older buildings. It's going to vary from city to city. We're working with our government to try to identify best practices in these areas so that we can encourage municipalities to look at types of building and zoning codes that promote and incentivize preservation, as opposed to encouraging demolition and neglect.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

You mentioned that data was important, Mr. Brown. Could you elaborate a little bit on what kind of data you collect and how important it is?

[David Brown]

It's become increasingly important in that more and more cities now are collecting all sorts of data. It might be things from building permits. We look at 50 or 100 different datasets when we go into a community. We're looking at where new businesses are opening, where the demolition permits are, and the like. It helps us when we take that dataset and look at places that are good opportunities for a city to invest in.

Cities are bringing new investment and private sector businesses into places that have older and historic buildings that perhaps are underutilized. We're trying to layer that data so that we can identify the areas where people want to be living. We've seen that people like these vibrant communities with older and mixed-use buildings, and we want to identify these older communities for future communities and encourage development and local government investment in those areas to stimulate the reuse of historic buildings. We're relying on open-source data, so it's easily available.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

You're totally privately funded. How does a group like yours look to influence government?

[David Brown]

We try to influence government in a number of different ways. It has helped us that we are totally privately funded. We work with the administration and Congress on issues that relate to tax policy, which is a big question right now in the U.S. We also work with state and local governments that are looking to provide incentives for preservation. We work at all three levels of government with partners in all of 50 states to try to identify and promote policies and practices and that will support the reuse of older buildings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today, or being here at least in the cyber world.

Thank you, Mr. Brown, for your interest in your neighbours to the north. Wayne asked a fair number of the questions I wanted to ask you so I won't ask those again. I'm fascinated with your success and the way you do things, and I'm interested in seeing, as Wayne is, and perhaps many people around the table, how we could do some of the things the U.S. is doing. I see it as being very successful.

Has Congress tasked your group specifically to be the main group in the country to build broad public support, or are there various groups out there doing what you're doing and what your group is doing, whether it be at the municipal or state level, or just groups of volunteers? I understand you're privately funded, but are you specifically tasked by Congress? Are you a machine of Congress?

[David Brown]

We are not a machine of Congress. We were chartered by Congress 60-plus years ago. We work with Congress, and our charter says that we are to build broad public support for preservation. De facto, we are the only large national non-profit organization that is working in this particular area. There are other national groups, but they tend to be much smaller in size.

We work with partner organizations in the non-profit sector at both the state and local level in every state of the union and the territories. We play a convening and coordinating role with those groups, but much of the preservation work that happens takes place at the state or local level, where the buildings are. We try to get involved when there are issues that are nationally significant, or where the property is of national importance, or where changing a policy can have national impact. That's where we can best use our resources. Obviously, tax policy is an example of something where we are heavily involved now because that has national impact. Saving one particular building in one particular community, we often turn that over, and our partner organizations focus on that work.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Again, forgive me for not understanding the exact structure of how you do things. Do you have the ability to hold certain projects to certain standards? For instance, if there are two buildings, do you get to determine or have a say in how the funding is appropriated to those two different buildings? For instance, if, one, you can save the facade of a building that is seen as being hugely important to a community or save the entire building of a building that might be less important to a community, do you see it as more important to save the entire historic building? I guess I'm talking about façadism. Is that something that still stands to a certain standard for heritage?

[David Brown]

It's interesting, in the U.S. system it's the government that maintains the control over where the regulation of those buildings takes place. Usually that's at the local level through local planning district commissions, historic district commissions, and city councils and the like. The National Park Service, which is our national organization on the government side, sets the standards for that kind of work. It also reviews the tax credit projects. In our system, we're more of an advocacy group and the government does the regulatory work.

In terms of façadism and how buildings should be rehabilitated, I'm of the belief that we have a whole range of buildings that we would benefit from keeping. Do we need to keep every piece of every building? No. I think that because of environmental, economic and social needs, there's value in keeping those buildings in place. There's value also in dealing with rehabilitation work at different levels for different types of buildings.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Eisenberg, I'm probably running out of time, but you mentioned building code. You're on the ground, you're doing the work, you're the quasi-developer in these buildings, so I'm interested in your thoughts. You didn't get much of a chance to expand on building code and your thoughts on how the building code might relate to restoring or retrofitting heritage buildings. It's not necessarily just help from a government entity for a guy like yourself to retrofit a building. How does the building code relate to restoring a heritage building, in your eyes?

[Robert Eisenberg]

To answer your question directly—although I would love to have chimed in on the previous speaker—we restore buildings for three different reasons. One, because of architectural excellence. In those instances you don't want façadism. Two, we do it for scale. Sometimes those historical buildings are in a row, therefore really the facade may be all you require. Third, we restore them because they may be associated with some famous event or some famous person who lived there.

Circumstances alter cases. What we don't like is preservation that preserves a state of architectural decrepitude. This is morphing into your question. We want to bring the buildings into the 21st century. We want them to be used; we don't want them to be museums. We want them to be representatives from living pasts. Sometimes what is more important than the actual bricks and mortar is the spirit that informed the creation of these buildings in the first place. We get these old industrial buildings that are 150 years old, 120 years old; and the optimism and the love of fine work that informed the kind of work to build an industrial building 150 years ago was quite incredible. There you really want to be careful what you preserve.

In direct answer to your question, you may be, for example, required by the building code to provide earthquake protection. In a new building, you build that right into the structure. When you're restoring an old building structure there's no way to beef up each column, so now you may have to strap new columns onto existing columns. You may have to put some kind of bracing all along the exterior wall. You have to somehow avoid the windows in doing that. It can be very costly.

I mentioned, for example, that the building code may have certain insulation requirements—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You're going to have to wrap it up quickly there.

Sorry.

[Robert Eisenberg]

Well, that's okay; I'm out of time.

There are many instances of building code issues that impact historical buildings that do not impact new construction. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Sorry, Darren. Sorry, Mr. Eisenberg.

It's very difficult for me as a chair to cut you off, but I know we have to be fair with everybody's time slot.

Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Brown, how do you decide what the difference is between an old building that's outlived it's usefulness and a heritage building? How do you make a distinction between the two types?

[David Brown]

Well, in the U.S. we have a listing of buildings. It's usually around architectural significance, historical significance, cultural significance, and integrity that makes for a building to be listed on our National Register of Historic Places, and in many instances on state registers as well.

We have looked at all the existing buildings in the 50 largest cities in the U.S. and only 4% of them are actually protected by a landmarks designation. You have a whole range of buildings that are old, that have not been designated. This gets to the heart of your question.

I think we've been too quick in the past to say this building has outlived its usefulness. One thing we're saying is that when we think about taking that material and putting it in the landfill, as we're thinking about the environmental impacts of carbon and the like, there's a lot of embedded energy in these older buildings. They may not be historic, but being able to reuse them is important. We look at those cases and say that we want you to think about all the impacts of reusing these buildings and not just whether it is a heritage building.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thanks.

Many years ago I had the honour of going to graduate school at a university in the northeastern U.S. I got a chance to see some of your great universities there. Some are 300 years old or more.

How are those universities...with those heritage buildings? How are they doing in terms of preservation?

[David Brown]

It's a case-by-case basis. Many of them are doing very well. In many instances those kinds of buildings actually attract students. I agree with Mr. Eisenberg that those buildings have to work in the 21st century. I think in many instances we're able to adapt them today. For other universities, it depends oftentimes on the universities' financial situation. Do they have the money to maintain those buildings? That can be a challenge for some of them.

I know for many universities their architectural heritage is part of their brand, if you will.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I can certainly see that.

I'm going to ask a fairly sensitive question right now, Mr. Brown. There's been a lot in the news lately about monuments and buildings causing offence, or perceived offence, to groups of people who want these buildings and monuments torn down because of things that were done a few hundred years ago. But there are other forces in your country that say that these are part of your history and deserve to be remembered and recognized.

How does your organization deal with those kinds of conflicts?