Environment committee  I think it would be interesting to see a really ambitious program that was moving forward, perhaps incrementally, on all fronts. I think it would be a lost opportunity if that didn't happen. I understand there's a need to have the federal government get its house in order in term

Environment committee  Yes. Our vice-chair is Lorna Crowshoe. She is from Blackfoot First Nation from Calgary. The National Trust was set up with an endowment and sent on its way back in 1973, so we don't receive any funds from the federal government now. I think it's important for all organizations t

Environment committee  Yes, it does. Actually, in the last three or four years, more of the focus of our national conference and the work we do has been around indigenous heritage issues. In Calgary in 2015, we had an event called Moh-Kins-Tsis, a Calgary indigenous heritage round table, which was asso

Environment committee  I think it's about recognizing the public value of those acts of care and the stewardship of these valuable resources. An 1813 house of that nature is incredibly rare, and I think there should be mechanisms that help encourage that, because once there's an owner who is not sympat

Environment committee  I think it's about connecting with what Madeleine and Karen and Julian were talking about, in terms of putting it in a larger context. It's not about the idea that John A. Macdonald slept here and that's the important thing about this building; it's about the fact that it's there

Environment committee  I think with a case that falls between the cracks—well, between the tracks, on railway land—in terms of who's responsible for it, in that case there is remediation and other things around it. It would be important to tighten up some of those rules so that we wouldn't have these i

Environment committee  Those are other examples of iconic buildings that don't have an answer, that need to have a boost to transition into something useful, to have some useful future.

Environment committee  In terms of the transition of railway stations from railway ownership and the requirement to have them designated at the local level, railway stations and railway properties are completely above the law. Provincial governments can't touch them with designation, and municipal gove

Environment committee  I think those rules could be tightened. I think there are ramifications for grain elevators, roundhouses, and other important properties on railway property.

Environment committee  I think the States has an interesting example of the good that the general services agency has done on.... What is it called, crown assets? There's a whole program that they have where they've taken these iconic buildings, which were designed—

Environment committee  I think the federal government departments do a reasonably good job in some respects, but the crown corporations are not restricted. I know that Canada Post—

Environment committee  Yes. I think that would definitely be a progressive measure. Crown corporations, including ports, Pickering airport lands, among others, and these iconic post offices.... What I would say about the federal management of buildings—and it comes to another point I think Mr. Stetski

Environment committee  I'll try to do one minute, or maybe 30 seconds, per question. We haven't seen a huge recalibration of the costs. The risk of heritage rehab is that in the mainstream construction industry, there isn't quite the same knowledge of how these old building systems worked. When they

Environment committee  They are available in 34 states in the U.S. They have found that the U.S. federal tax credit is not quite enough. For the same rehabilitation work, you can put them together and get 20% off and a 20% to 25% tax credit, on top of the 20% available federally for that rehabilitation

Environment committee  Actually, I'm not sure why it was concluded, but it was successful. I think there were 49 projects involved, and as I think Julian mentioned, they had leveraged eight times more in private investment, of $177 million. It was trying to test the appetite and the impact that a feder