Government Operations committee  Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, and committee members. I would like to thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee this morning. My name is Benjamin Shinewald and I am CEO of BOMA Canada. I will begin the presentation and then my colleague, John Smiciklas, our

Government Operations committee  I don't have anything to add to Mr. Eickmeier's comments. Our organization in general focuses on existing construction or existing buildings, so there is value for sure in designing buildings that are newly built to cutting edge standards. But I always say that it's a little bit

Government Operations committee  That's our question for you.

Government Operations committee  Let me answer your first question to the three of us, and then I'll turn it over to John to answer the second question. On the tax question, it's not our bread and butter of what our members do, but it's an idea that we endorse. That's why we're not a part of the coalition. But

Government Operations committee  BOMA BESt is the program that we at BOMA run, of course. It's not for me to describe what LEED is. I'll leave that to the people who run LEED, but I do think it's fair to say, without transgressing, that the programs, in general, are complementary. In some instances, there's prob

Government Operations committee  It would be BOMA BESt—I'm kidding. The programs are quite different. LEED has a variety of different modules, and I use that word quite loosely. Their bread and butter has been in new construction. They have other areas as well, including existing buildings. Again, ours has bee

Government Operations committee  John has already spoken for us, but I will add one comment, and it's that I'm relatively new to my position—John is too—and I think it's fair to say that BOMA runs the dominant awards program for building management in the industry. I was amazed at how seriously our stakeholders

Government Operations committee  A lot of buildings have both.

Government Operations committee  We could also add that the government's profile of building stock is going to be wildly different from that of a regular private sector player because of the breadth of the activities of the government. We stand ready to create new modules that would properly capture the energy

Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. We will make our presentation in English, but if there are any questions in French, we can try to answer in that language. We just got notice a few days ago, as you've mentioned, so we prepared this short deck. We have a longer deck that's also ready for

Environment committee  I will just elaborate on one point that Randal made, and then I'll move on to the next question. A lot of people look at buildings as being static entities, where a guy with a broom comes at the end of the day, and that's the maintenance it requires. In fact buildings—and I hig

Environment committee  I will go on to the second question, looking at provincial programs for energy efficiency retrofitting of buildings and how federal existing or new programs could further incentivize energy-efficient renovations. You've listed a bunch of them. Obviously, our view is that our pro

Environment committee  Actually, I was thinking about this slide in front of us. Our answer is that energy efficiency is energy efficiency, irrespective of whether the grid is cleaner or less clean. Actually, one thing missing from the slide is incentivizing on-site production of energy through solar

Environment committee  The yellow card is already up. I feel like I'm playing soccer.

Environment committee  Thank you very much for the extra time.