Environment committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thanks for inviting me here today. It's a pleasure to share this conversation with you. I want to talk about a couple of things, but first I would like to provide a little bit of background. I'm a conservation architect and u

Environment committee  Last but not least, I would like the community to think about historic infrastructure and sustainability as well in terms of the Prince of Wales Bridge, which you may know, here in Ottawa. It's a historic place. Think about how it could be adaptively reused, using a train line th

Environment committee  The costing is very complex. The cost includes both the hard costs and the soft costs. It was $99 million. There are so many different elements that go into that, in terms of connecting into utilities and infrastructure; clearing an existing, essentially fallow, site that was be

Environment committee  Three of the points that I made touch on what I'll call my answer to that. First of all, since we've brought in the established standards and guidelines that are being used across the country now, I think that this has given a higher degree of confidence that we can revitalize hi

Environment committee  I appreciate the question, Andy. It's not really a question. As you say, we need to have some discussion. I see that there are already some mechanisms in place, which I'll discuss in a second, and which I think we need to build on. For example, Parks and other organizations will

Environment committee  The first one that comes to mind is London, Ontario. They had an armoury that was purchased by corporate interests. They turned it into a hotel. They actually had a hotel tower growing out of the centre of the parade ground of the armoury. In terms of ideas, Mr. Casey, is the bu

Environment committee  I would hope that the good folks of Amherst would be looking for business opportunities, and would first of all go through the opportunities and the ideas. This has to be community-based, at least to start. You need to look at the condition it's in so that if somebody wants to be

Environment committee  That's the sixty-four-million dollar question. Our firm is involved with the East Block rehabilitation, so I know exactly what you're talking about. That's the centre of the debate. The first things that happen are comprehensive evaluations to ensure we understand what are the

Environment committee  If I understand your question correctly, you're asking if, when we go through the process of evaluating heritage properties, we are including the environmental elements in that evaluation.

Environment committee  That's a great question. The short answer is that up until today, the two have been in silos. Heritage conservation and environmental conservation have been in their silos. I think what you're finding right now is that we are at the vanguard of that changing. People are understan