Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm starting with some reflections about where I come from, which is metro Vancouver. Notwithstanding the marvellous things that technology opens up to us and some things like privacy lurk that in the background, I submit there are some foundational things that we may be looking to smart technology to help us overcome, some decisions that weren't necessarily good ones in the past. I'm going to ask Mr. Andrishak to reflect on this a little, being a resident of Metro Vancouver.
Our smart-city plans started in the late sixties with a decision not to allow freeways to be built into Vancouver and the whole concept that we needed a livable region. What did that look like? We asked people, and a number of things emerged. One was the concept of the town centre, where people didn't necessarily have to travel a long way for their recreation, their commercial needs, their services, or even their work. The second was more of a reliance on public transit to move people around.
The combination of visioning and land use planning, and then reasonable adherence to that plan, led to decisions that improved livability in the region—led to, for instance, a very strong investment in public transit. I submit that many of the smart-city things that many cities are talking about are really there to make up for the fact that this didn't happen in the past. We're doing our best to minimize the need to travel, which then minimizes the need to build roads and have a lot of the private automobile infrastructure.
Mr. Andrishak, as somebody who's maybe been a little more involved in metro Vancouver's affairs, can you expand on that, or add to it?