Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I'm going to take this up a level in terms of the concept of greening government. One of the purposes of launching the centre for greening government was to have the federal government's activities towards meeting climate goals—through the federal buildings and fleets and other emissions—become a bit of a driver for the green economy, for innovation, and for a clean energy economy much more broadly.
I've had conversations with people in those sectors where, for example, the representative of a very major landlord of office buildings here in Ottawa said, “You know, it's great that government is doing this, because we're ready to be partners, but the market is really not demanding that we do the things we could be doing.” I've had the same conversation with a huge construction firm and other national construction firms, who are saying, “We're ready, but our customers are not necessarily demanding that we do the much more efficient and green projects. Government driving this will help.”
I am interested in what we need to understand as a government so that we can really leverage the work we're doing to stimulate these kinds of innovations, materials development and process improvements more broadly in the Canadian economy so we can become a real leader in that and export those goods and services.
Maybe BOMA could start with thoughts on that.