Welcome. It's a very interesting panel, and thanks for what you've shared.
I want to start with Mr. Bernhardt.
I recognize that we need to talk about federal jurisdiction, but when you were talking about permitting and the work that you're seeing happen, it struck me. When I was first elected, a gentleman came to see me. He was a retired commercial pilot who wanted to give back to the environment, so in his retirement he set up a solar installation company. In the Lower Mainland, in three years of operations, he'd been able to install zero solar panels because of the permitting costs. He came to me and said, “Well, can the federal government help with anything?” He was saying that in many of the municipalities throughout metro Vancouver, it was anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to get a permit to install solar panels on a detached house.
All of his business was off the grid, in fishing camps and those types of things. There's a municipal piece, but are you seeing that with the kind of permits that you were speaking about? Are there disincentives to doing the kind of greening initiatives within urban areas? Are there areas that are leading, and is there a role for the federal government to deal with organizations such as FCM to try to make it easier to permit for energy retrofits?