My name is Rick Goodacre. I'm the executive director with Heritage BC. Heritage BC is a non-profit provincial umbrella society that represents about 165 member organizations around the province.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak this morning.
Before getting into my presentation, and to put it into context of current discussions about sustainability and global climate change, I would like to note that the greenest building is the one that's already built.
In our brief submitted in August we spoke to one principal issue, the national historic places initiative, and I will this morning use my time to speak about this one issue again.
In its written invitations to Canadians to make their views known, the committee specifically identified tax policy, asking what changes to the current tax system might be beneficial. I will be talking about such a measure this morning.
Before doing that, I would like to give the committee a little background on the essential nature of heritage conservation, which I think would be some useful context.
Canada has many heritage buildings and historic places that we value as part of the fabric of our society. There are an estimated 20,000 such places that have some official designation or identification across the country. While some heritage buildings are publicly owned, most are in private hands, and while a few have been set aside and protected as unique artifacts of Canadian history, the great majority have not. In fact, like people, buildings have to work to make a living, and heritage buildings are no exception.
A heritage building, if it is to survive, must have a useful function, and this means there must be routine maintenance and sometimes significant investment and rehabilitation when that function must be updated or changed altogether. For many of our heritage buildings, we rely on the private sector to develop an industry to make these investments to keep the building working and to find new uses when required, but the public also has an interest in these resources. We value the buildings for their heritage character, the qualities they bring to our historic downtowns--and I refer you to downtown Victoria, just across the bridge here--their appeal for tourists, and their opportunities for business and housing.
We want to see them used and reused. We don't want to see them demolished and put in the landfill. We don't want to see the embodied energy in these buildings wasted and we don't want to lose more of our history.
The reality of heritage conservation is therefore a complex relationship and partnership between the private and the public sectors. The private sector provides the initiative and takes many of the risks. The public sector provides the planning and developing context but must also share in the investment if we expect heritage conservation to happen.
There are many excellent programs at the local government level; nonetheless, many of our heritage buildings remain underutilized--derelict, even--and facing demolition. In response to a scenario of continuing losses of our heritage, in 2001 the federal government launched the historic places initiative, or HPI. The HPI has been a national rather than a federal effort, involving all provinces and territories in an exceptional degree of accord that reflects the unanimous agreement that this is something worth doing.
A basic federal commitment from the outset that was fundamental to building this national accord was to bring the federal government into the heritage conservation business at the street level in cities and communities across Canada by becoming a participant in the business of heritage rehabilitation. The historic places initiative over the next two years laid the groundwork. The historic places branch was created, a national register of historic places was established, standards and guidelines for historic conservation were published by the federal government, and a network of project certification agents was set up to deal with project inspection and approval.
The next step was to launch the Commercial Heritage Properties Incentive Fund in the 2003 federal budget. This $30 million program, providing grants of up to $1 million to private development projects involving recognized heritage buildings, was confirmed at the outset by then Minister of Finance John Manley to be a pilot for a much anticipated federal tax incentive to attract investment in the rehabilitation of heritage buildings.
Although a number of projects were supported by this program, it was wound up early, a year ago. To date we've heard nothing more from the federal government about a tax incentive program for heritage buildings or any similar measures.
Canada needs a federal tax incentive for our irreplaceable stock of heritage buildings. All of the basic elements are in place. The preliminary milestones have been passed. The research has been done. The departments of environment and finance have been talking about this for several years. The pilot project has been completed, and it's now time to act.
Thank you.