Evidence of meeting #123 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cra.
A video is available from Parliament.
November 7th, 2017 / 6:20 p.m.
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
Certainly, I do. I'm also on the executive of the Canadian Bar Association, so I wouldn't want to speak against their position.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Could you speak as an individual on this? The first thing this bill does is to make changes to work-in-progress. Eventually, 20% at a time, of the billing that's due at the end of the year, even if you haven't yet received the money for the work that's been done, it's assumed that you have received it, so you have to make a payment to the government.
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
Correct. Certainly, as an individual, I'm concerned about those provisions.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Can you tell me why you're concerned?
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
I'm not going to have the income in my hand to pay the tax.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
What will you do then? Will you just not take business on a contingency basis?
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
I don't take business on a contingency basis in any event, because that's not the nature of my practice. But, absolutely, it's of concern.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
In my, more rural-oriented, area, I've heard from lawyers who say they just won't accept people who are a bit more marginal, because they're worried that they will have to pay the bill for those cases through other accounts. That might mean that some people won't be able to get access to a lawyer to be able to raise their concerns. Do you think that's a problem?
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
I can't speak for individuals in rural communities. My clients are charities and not-for-profits. Often, I don't get paid until they find other sources of funds in order to pay me, and that's just the nature of my practice. This kind of a change certainly will impact on that. I'm not going to change my practice, because of my commitment to clients.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Okay. It's the nature of my practice to try and get all I can.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Cooper, I wanted to talk about your testimony in regard to the technical changes. When the officials were here, I asked questions about those technical changes. They explained that if a gift of land were made to a municipality, the latter didn't have to go through this process. This is a technical change to level the playing field. You mentioned that this is a welcome change. From your perspective, did you see, for example, gifts being to municipalities that maybe didn't need them, in the sense of land acquisition, rather than to land trusts or charities that could be stewards of the land, because one was administratively more cumbersome?
Drache Aptowitzer LLP, As an Individual
With respect to that particular provision, I feel it's appropriate to level the playing field. When an organization takes on the obligation to protect environmentally sensitive land, it comes with an obligation to steward that land. Not all municipalities have the capacity, or even the interest, necessarily, to properly steward.
Also, I have a concern downstream. There are sometimes pressures on municipalities to develop. I think this is a program that has both a belt and suspenders, and it's appropriate to strengthen that belt and those suspenders wherever possible to ensure that the land remains protected in perpetuity. A level playing field with respect to municipalities, I think, is appropriate.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Ms. Thompson, I don't know if this question is appropriate for you, because it sounds like you're really involved in running the bigger projects. However, when I was on a municipal council many years ago—hence, my previous question—we were trying to push for new developments to have geothermal energy. In my hometown riding of Pickering, we have a lot of new development, and we were pushing for geothermal, but the development industry really didn't go there.
When we were looking at the standards, such as gold, platinum, and things like that, you would get one point for geothermal or one point for a bike rack. You can imagine, then, that the development industry didn't really want to put the expense into this type of technology for residential homes.
As I said, if this question is not for you, please let me know. Does this change now encourage geothermal use in more applications, because now it's being recognized in a system that in the building industry especially is being pushed, especially through planning acts, building codes, and things like that? Do you see this moving in that direction?
Chair of the Board, Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
I'm from Pickering as well, so thank you for the question. My family still lives there. I was there this past weekend.
You're describing geoexchange. There's a whole other association called the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition, versus CanGEA geothermal energy. The energy we're talking about is literally the energy source radiating from the centre of the earth. Geoexchange is the ability of very shallow earth to store solar energy that then gets trapped a few metres down. They actually just exchange very low level degrees, for example 10° to 12°C, which goes back and forth into buildings and houses. Geoexchange is not geothermal energy, which is what we're speaking about.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
We were actually talking about geothermal technology.
Chair of the Board, Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
No, geothermal—
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Perhaps we can talk about it afterwards, but we were actually looking at opportunities for geothermal technology.
Chair of the Board, Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
Many people call it “geothermal”. It's the same as people misusing the word “engineer”, and I'm an engineer. Geoexchange is the technology you're describing. We drill one to three kilometres underground. This is more like oil and gas.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Okay, so it really doesn't have that application in terms of pushing to have the technology adapted, essentially, or utilized more.
Chair of the Board, Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
To answer a different way, in Paris, France, they are the largest users of district heating. What they do is replace a natural gas boiler or a propane or bunker fuel boiler. The earth boils the water first, and then it comes up and can be distributed to the houses. That replaces your forced air convection furnace. That still originates one to three kilometres down. It comes up to a centralized facility, and then they do district heating. It's very different from just one home or one facility.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We will have to cut it off there.
On behalf of the committee, I certainly thank all of the witnesses for the interesting exchange at times. I think you've been helpful to our study on Bill C-63.
With that, the meeting is adjourned.