Environment committee  Thank you very much and good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present my ideas on built heritage in Canada. My contribution is based on my experience as Parks Canada's director general of national historic sites from 1986 to 2005, so almost 20 years. During that time, I

Environment committee  I'll start, but Gordon is really the expert. If it is a designated national historic site within Parks Canada, there is legislation through the Parks Canada Agency Act and through policy to protect it. If it's a designated national historic site within the federal family, not un

Environment committee  Not much has changed. My colleagues have explained that the concept of what is heritage has changed, and there's a sustainability emphasis, a broader cultural landscape approach, and an approach by districts as opposed to individual designations. Those kinds of things have change

Environment committee  Well, it's not my area of expertise, but Parks Canada and the Government of Canada have actually acquired quite a number of fur trade posts across the country and have used some of them for really museological purposes. They do indeed try to tell the story of the fur trade. I hav

Environment committee  I would just like to mention that there is one very good model of a site in the Northwest Territories called Sahoyue-Edacho, which to all intents and purposes looks like a national park and has really no built resources in it. It probably has archeological resources. It's designa

Environment committee  Assuming they are designated by some level of government, then the ownership matters. If it remains in federal ownership, then some of the things we've been talking about—

Environment committee  —would be a legislative issue to my point of view, and that legislation would be accompanied with some funding support, because the other departments will be looking for that. If it's out of the federal basket, then these other tools come into play. If the building were owned and

Environment committee  The crown corporations, as was said here at the table, are completely out of any federal heritage buildings policy, which only applies to departments. This would require legislation.

Environment committee  I don't see it so much as being in the context of rural. I understand the issue is often a rural one, but it would be the obligation of a crown corporation or the obligation of another federal department to take into consideration the heritage value as recognized by either a nati

Environment committee  That could be a consideration, and in terms of priority setting, that would be something that would be considered as part of your recommendations and as part of developing legislation.

Environment committee  It's because Gordon and I don't agree on this point, so I'll give you my quick hit and give him some time. I was very disappointed that the Minister of Environment's mandate letter did not include cultural heritage. I'll leave that there. I know he'll have more to say about tha

Environment committee  I honestly can't answer that. I'm not inside anymore. I don't know how it was allocated. Really, I haven't done a study of that. I think this is something an auditor general would come through and do another report on to see how it had addressed some of the failings that were ide

Environment committee  I think you've had Dr. Alway in to talk about how that process works, so I won't repeat that. I think the idea of the Canadian Register of Historic Places was really designed to capture exactly what you're talking about, and that in terms of federal jurisdiction the responsibil

Environment committee  That was where the tax credit program was targeted—

Environment committee  —and that was really in relation to any registered property, so that would be the area to explore. I know we're out of time.