Thank you, and good morning.
It's great to be here to speak with the Standing Committee on Finance on behalf of the Consulting Architects of Alberta.
The Consulting Architects of Alberta is a relatively new organization. It was founded to represent the business interests of the architectural community in Alberta. It works in collaboration with the Alberta Association of Architects, which is our regulatory body, and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, our national advocacy body.
When we looked at your questions and identified the wide range of interests that architects have in the environment, in the economy, and in the future budget of this country, we identified three areas that we could speak to among the many of interest to us as architects. Those three are the environment, the federal stimulus program and actual infrastructure construction, and the cultural infrastructure of our country. All of those are part of the wide range of issues and interests that we as architects address on a day-to-day basis.
Starting with the environmental issues, we're delighted to see the ongoing commitment of the Government of Canada to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment, recognizing the very large contribution that buildings and the communities make toward greenhouse gases.
We can dramatically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by improving their energy performance for both existing and new buildings. That we can do, and incentive programs are of great assistance to that.
We would invite the government to consider reinstating or expanding new incentive programs to replace those that have been eliminated. For instance, the LEED green building rating system, which has taken off across the country, is one that should be recognized and incented. We would appreciate an incentive program that would recognize and reward both private sector and public sector owners who get their buildings certified to a green building standard.
Secondly, on the issue of the economy and the federal stimulus measures, certainly it's been great to see the number of dollars that have been committed to infrastructure, but it's interesting to hear the focus on “shovel-ready”. That, of course, is of great concern to us as architects and as engineers. We recognize that about 10% of the man-hours involved in the world of infrastructure are actually related to the knowledge economy, or the architecture and engineering of the work. We suggest that a term such as “pencil-ready” might be more appropriate than “shovel-ready”. That way, when projects are in the process of being developed and imagined, there's an opportunity to spend time on design and construction.
Many of our clients are very frustrated by the very short timeframes that have been provided for shovel-ready projects, and as a result have been proceeding with less urgent road repairs instead of more urgent building design. The building design simply takes too long to design and construct within the very tight windows that have been established.
Finally, I think there's an opportunity to look to Canada's future. We're coming to 2017, our 150th birthday. It's an opportunity to create a cultural buildings program across the country, and the time is now. It's important that we start to think about designing libraries, new museums, new cultural facilities, and buildings of all manner that will celebrate the richness and diversity of the culture of our country. We have heritage buildings that need preservation and we have new buildings that need to be designed and constructed so that our children will have an even richer cultural environment.
If we cast our minds back to 1967, we are reminded of the number of centennial projects that we all enjoy today, including auditoriums and libraries and recreational facilities. We would invite the government to consider including in this year's budget a fairly substantial initiative around the planning and design of a whole new set of cultural facilities in every community, as well as in first nations communities, across this country.
In summary, there are basically three areas that are of particular interest to the architects in Alberta. Those are the environment, infrastructure, and cultural infrastructure.
We welcome your questions.