HANSARD

and

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Mr. Peter Christie (Chairman)

Mr. Ernest Fage

Mr. Gary Hines

Mr. Frank Corbett

Mr. Howard Epstein

Ms. Joan Massey

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Leo Glavine

Ms. Diana Whalen

[Mr. Ernest Fage was replaced by Mr. James DeWolfe.]

[Mr. Frank Corbett was replaced by Ms. Michele Raymond.]

In Attendance:

Mrs. Sherri Mitchell

Acting Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Legislative Counsel

WITNESSES

Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia

Mr. Alan Parish, President

Mr. Graeme Duffus, Vice-President

Also in Attendance:

Ms. Sandra Sackett

Heritage Trust Member and Chair

Trust Newsletter Editor

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2006

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Peter Christie

MR. CHAIRMAN: It's now 9:00 a.m. The meeting was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m., so perhaps we will come to order now. As is the tradition, we will introduce ourselves for Hansard, for the recording.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Committee members, there were a few items left over from the last meeting. You will recall there was an issue surrounding Mr. Van Zoost, and there was a question as to whether the committee would call him or send a letter to ask him if he would like to come in. The answer he submitted to us is no, so I pass that on to the committee. Unless somebody has any further suggestions, we will let that episode ride off into history.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

The next item, we will move on to the appointments to agencies, boards and commissions. You have in front of you the first one, which is Gregory Barro for the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation. That was in front of you last time. You have the correspondence back from the minister.

Ms. Whalen.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: I'd like to make a couple of comments on that if I could. I do see that the conflict of interest they said was indicated not in the Act but in the guidelines

for appointment to that committee - it indicated they didn't want people who were active in

the industry, so people who, I would say, had industry experience or knowledge, in a sense, are precluded. That's probably a discussion either for today or another day, if other members want.

The larger issue, I think, at play here is that on the appointments that have just expired, there was another partner of the same law firm who had an appointment that just expired in February, actually it might have been February 2005, I'll have to look at that. At the same time, what my concern is whether or not - yes, it was February 2005 that was the expiration of the last appointment, and that was for Martin Pink's appointment. I feel that we should look into seeing whether any other lawyers or other firms had applied, if we are looking for legal expertise on that committee. It seems to me that it's not right to continue to keep it in the same firm all the time. I would like the committee to look at that or discuss that today.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your suggestion is that we send correspondence to the minister or that we open the floor for discussion on that item?

MS. WHALEN: I think we should open the floor to discussion. If there is no discussion, then I'll make a motion that we send correspondence to the minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We don't have a motion on the floor yet to appoint that person. So do you want to have the discussion prior to that?

MS. WHALEN: No, let's have a motion.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Do I have a motion to move the appointment of Mr. Barro?

MR. JAMES DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, to the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, I so move Gregory Barro as a member.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is on the floor. Do we have further discussion on the motion?

MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Mr. Chairman, the points that were made by Ms. Whalen I think were also made at our last discussion. The minister, in his comments, seems to have responded only to part of the discussion that was held by the committee last time. Really, I think he omitted to engage with the main issue. The main issue is indeed the one that Ms. Whalen identified. The question really is why it is that we're not finding candidates coming forward from perhaps a broader base. It was a little surprising to find a lawyer from exactly the same firm in Yarmouth come forward to be on this board.

I agree with her point, that is that the minister should be invited to comment on this before we go ahead with the approval. As we all know, one of the difficulties with the process in front of this committee is that we don't know the full range of applicants who have put themselves forward; therefore, we're not really in a position to point to someone else as a better qualified candidate. That's not our function, but we can raise this question with the minister. Since he chose not to address it, I think it should be put to him specifically this time, the question being, is it not possible to find someone from a different locale, or certainly a different firm in this case. I certainly agree with that comment. In saying so I have to say, and I think I said it last time, that this was not meant to reflect upon anything personal to the individual who applied and put his name forward, not by any means.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: I, too, have concerns about this, appointing a lawyer from the same law firm seems unusual, very unusual. If it was a reappointment, it might be different, but a different lawyer from the same firm, it's unusual. Also, there are some questions I would like the minister to answer, as well. The Film Development Corporation, between 2003, 2004 and 2005 spent each year, respectively, $25,000, $25,000 and $60,000 on legal fees. I'd like to know what legal firms those were before we make this appointment, because it could be a conflict of interest here. It probably isn't, but there could be. We would like to get that information before we do an appointment on this. If there's going to be a lawyer and legal fees spent somewhere, hopefully there's not a conflict of interest, but indeed there could be.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We've had two speakers wanting additional information. We have two options, one is to defeat this motion and the second is to stand it and request further information. How would you like to proceed?

MS. WHALEN: I'd make the motion that we stand it until we have further information, which hopefully will come back next month.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is to stand this appointment. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

We will follow up then. The questions that I heard you ask were: are there people from other law firms, are there other areas that have applied, are there other professions that have applied? Indeed, there were some questions as to what law firms were doing business with the Film Development Corporation. So those are the questions at hand.

The next item on the agenda is the Waterfront Development Corporation Limited. This item was in the last meeting, and it was stood. It's back in front of you today. You have the response from Paul LaFleche. How would you like to proceed?

MR. GARY HINES: Mr. Chairman, to the Waterfront Development Corporation Limited, I so move George Archibald, William Gates and Donald McIver as directors.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion?

MS. WHALEN: I think it's important that we at least comment on the letter that we received back. I was in the Chair last month, in your place, and we did write a letter asking that this be looked at from a gender equity point of view. I understand that the clause that was sent back to us - I hope everybody has the letter in front of them on the Waterfront Development Corporation, the letter is dated March 17^th, from the Clerk of the Executive Council. I understand this is an answer that has come back on previous occasions as well. It essentially outlines our function. It says that the function of our committee is to approve or not approve the name before it, not to consider or recommend alternative names for appointments.

I really feel that's a little bit of a slap on the hand, telling us that we really don't have much say in what goes on. That's very much the discussion that other members of this committee have had in the last few months. I think it's worth noting that, really, we're told it's not our place to ask those questions. I somewhat disagree.

MR. EPSTEIN: In any event, of course we're not recommending other names, we asked a question about gender balance on this commission. I have to say the letter back was not responsive to the question.

MR. HINES: If I might, the letter does indicate that for the Waterfront Development Corporation, the departmental screening panel screened all applicants and put forward the qualified applications to the minister. So the process was more intense maybe than we might expect, because they were screened when they came forward.

MR. EPSTEIN: To sharpen the point, I find it hard to think that there are not qualified female applicants out there who could serve on this commission. It is quite common practice in the departments, or out of the Executive Council, to seek out, even beyond the advertising, qualified applicants. I have to say what our comments should be seen as doing is encouraging the responsible department or the Executive Council to reconsider the names, to think about the range of people for whom they get resumés.

The problem is not just that the letter back was non-responsive to the point raised, but it's non-responsive to appoint where credibility is strained. We really have no reason to think that some more qualified female applicants could not be found. The point wasn't even necessarily that there had to be absolute parity but that this was a notably imbalanced entity in that respect.

MR. COLWELL: I would agree with that. I think that if even one of these names was from a female applicant it would be more palatable. I'm not very happy with the answer we got back that just sort of said, go away. Basically that's what the letter said. I'm not prepared to move forward on this until we get a better answer back from the Waterfront Development Corporation. We'll see what they propose to do about it. As I say, even if one of these applicants - I'd be prepared to maybe approve one or two of these but not all of them until we can find out if there is a lady available who is very qualified - and I'm sure there is - in the area.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, we have two options. We could ask Mr. Hines to change his motion so that we do them individually and approve them that way, or we could make a motion to stand this and go back for further information. What is your pleasure?

MR. HINES: Mr. Chairman, I would move that we deal with them individually.

To the Waterfront Development Corporation Limited, I so move George Archibald as a director.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there any debate on the motion? Are you ready for the question?

MS. WHALEN: I think the question really is whether or not we wanted to look at them as a group rather than individually. The reason for that would be that among the three names put forward I don't think we particularly want to show a preference for one or the other, moving two and staying one. The implication might be that we have some objection to an individual, which is not the case. It really has more to do with the equity. If, in fact, we were to approve all three, we would have a committee that's made up of nine men and one woman. That's really our concern. I'm not sure if other members of the committee would now like to comment, as well, but that's why we're delaying it slightly.

MR. HINES: Mr. Chairman, I would agree with that, if that's what they want.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I hear a motion to stand this.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next item, the Library Board for Cape Breton. Do I have a motion for Mr. Mitchell?

MR. DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Education, to the Cape Breton Library Board, I so move John A. Mitchell as a member.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion? Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next item is the Library Board for Pictou-Antigonish.

MR. HINES: Mr. Chairman, to the Pictou-Antigonish Library Board, I so move Paul Fraser and Conrad Poirier as members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion? Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

The next one is the Resource Recovery Fund Board.

MR. DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Environment and Labour, to the Resource Recovery Fund Board, I so move Einar Christensen as a board member.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion? Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Next is the Department of Health, Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia.

MR. HINES: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Health, to the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, I so move Allan Green and Gwen Haliburton as board members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion? Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Next is the Department of Justice, Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission.

MR. DEWOLFE: Mr. Chairman, under the Department of Justice, Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission, I so move Donald Harding as chairman and member, and James L. Chipman and Glenn Joudrey as members.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there discussion on the motion? Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

[9:15 a.m.]

Thank you very much. That moves us on to our witnesses for the day. It's my great pleasure to welcome Mr. Alan Parish, President, and Mr. Graeme Duffus, Vice-President, of Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia. They're here at your request to share information with you and, indeed, hopefully answer questions and to try to persuade to their line of thinking.

Gentlemen, the floor is yours.

MR. ALAN PARISH: Mr. Chairman, we appreciate the invitation to come here today. To be honest with you, I wasn't exactly certain if there was a particular subject that you wanted us to discuss, relating to heritage issues. If there is, I would appreciate it if we could dovetail into that right away. What I did do is I put together some thoughts, and they've been distributed to the members of the committee this morning. If you want, I can run through those. What I was hoping to do today, as much as anything, is get into some discourse with the committee members on heritage issues, because I think that's probably the best way to develop an understanding of where we are.

Having said that, if, in fact, you're asking us just to report on issues that we think are important, let me turn to this little handout that I've put together here. At the beginning of the handout I talk about some basic principles with respect to the importance of heritage to Nova Scotians. In particular, there's a real link that many people are well aware of between commercialization and heritage. Our heritage assets really are a commercial asset. A lot of people think that it costs a lot of money to maintain heritage buildings and we're better to tear them down and put up new things, and the reality is that our heritage buildings are an economic asset that we need to take care of for our mutual benefit. I'm not going to get into the little talk on that in any great detail at this point.

Let me go right to the nub of the issues of the legislation that our province has, that's the second topic. We have very weak legislation in Nova Scotia to protect our heritage assets. The way it works at the moment under the Heritage Property Act is that any municipally-registered property, of which most of the registered properties are municipally registered, an owner can basically tear it down and demolish it so long as he gives notice of a year. So that's really no protection at all, because it takes that length of time to make plans for the new development in any case.

Provincially-registered heritage properties have a little more protection in that if they're going to be substantially altered or if they're going to be demolished, the owner has

to get the permission of the Cabinet. That goes through the Advisory Council to the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Heritage. They then advise the minister, but as far as I can see the minister then decides what he wants to do, reports to Cabinet, and Cabinet makes a decision. I'm going to talk about that process a little later.

I think there may be 300 registered provincially. Graeme, is that the right number, do you think? (Interruptions) I think there are around 300 provincially-registered heritage properties, and a lot of those are government buildings, churches and those kinds of things, as opposed to private homes. Most of the private homes that are registered are registered municipally.

The question then is, what do you do to protect our heritage assets? What we would propose is that instead of just a one-year delay for municipally-registered properties, some provision has to be created whereby some administrative body has to decide whether or not this building can be demolished. Now there are different models for that particular body. You could take the provincially-registered buildings, where the body in question is the Cabinet. You could make the body that makes the decision the municipal council, so that it would have to come before the municipal council to decide what to do.

In many other jurisdictions in the world, they don't use the municipal council, they create a special administrative body to make these decisions. They move it a little out of the political sphere. On these committees, they make requirements that people on the committee have to have certain backgrounds, such as engineers, architects and historians, so that you get a group of people who are educated with respect to the particular issues that they're going to be dealing with. It's this body that decides whether or not the building can be substantially altered or demolished, so we would recommend a change to the legislation to let that occur.

Now, one of the issues with respect to our current legislation that we have some difficulty with is with respect to the provincial heritage properties. Let me talk about your own system because you probably don't know how your own system works very well right now.

For somebody to substantially alter or demolish a provincially-registered heritage property, they make an application originally to what I'll call the bureaucratic system. There is a Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage here in your province. Bill Greenlaw is the Director of the Heritage Division in that department. He did have a fellow by the name of Kevin Barrett working underneath him who, I think, is his only staff person. Unfortunately, Kevin is off on disability now and has been off on disability for some period of time. I think that maybe somebody from another department has been seconded to do the administrative work part-time. So it creates this log-jam where, first of all, if somebody makes an application to get a provincially-registered heritage building registered, it takes forever to even get his application considered. By forever, I mean it could be a year to get it considered.

Then what happens is, it goes before the provincial Heritage Advisory Committee. Now, this committee is made up of good people. Probably you people around this table appoint them. There have been some difficulties there. That committee went for about a year, a couple of years ago, without meeting, maybe a year and a half without meeting. There's no requirement for it to have meetings at any particular times. It's called at the whim of the Chair. The Chair might decide to have a meeting and he might not - I think it's the Chair, maybe it's the department that makes that decision - so that can be another holdup in the whole process.

Then the committee has a meeting and, as I understand it, it's a private meeting. The media is not allowed, the public is not allowed at this debate about whether these buildings should be demolished. Then the decision of the committee is private and confidential. It goes to the minister and, as far as I know - I could be wrong - that's confidential and nobody knows what it is.

Then the minister makes a recommendation to Cabinet which, again, nobody knows what that is, until finally there's an Order in Council that comes out. So the whole process, as you can see, in our view, needs a complete revamping to make it more transparent so that there can be a public debate about these important buildings, so that the minister, himself, can be accountable for his decisions.

One of the other issues that we've faced is the issue of a non-owner applying to register a building as a provincially-registered heritage building.

Graham brought with him an application that the Heritage Trust put in here. I'll just hold it up. This is what we call the Forman Uniacke House. Many of you will be familiar with it. It's down on Hollis Street by the Terminal Road Building. It's on the west-hand side of the street. It was built in 1826. It's a lovely Georgian building. It's on 1246 Hollis Street. It's pretty well intact inside with all of the mouldings, the hardware and all that sort of thing. But, as you well know, it's probably slated for a demolition in the next couple of years because the development is moving south, down toward that end of the city, and the value of the land is becoming more and more valuable. My guess is that we're probably going to lose that building.

So the Heritage Trust applied to have that building registered as a provincially-registered heritage property. It was lived in by one of the Uniacke family. James Forman was a member of the Bank of Nova Scotia, an early member. It's a lovely house. It still sits on a good piece of property. In our view, at least, there should be a public debate as to whether or not it should be preserved for future generations.

However, I think our application sat for, I think, more than a year before it was considered by the Heritage Advisory Committee. Then, after a couple of meetings, we were told that they don't accept applications from non-owners. I pointed out to them the legislation

which indicated to me that non-owners could apply. In fact, then I was told that, yes, you're right, Mr. Parish, the legislation does assume that non-owners can apply but there's a policy that we have that non-owners can't apply. So I said, where did that policy come from? They said, well, it's a policy from some years ago.

I think now they have decided to revamp that policy but this discussion has been going on now for about a year on the policy and I'm not aware of any new policy. I think we put our application in - it might be three years ago. So we really don't have any movement on it yet. I'm giving you an idea of the administrative bureaucracy that you've got in your Heritage Department here.

Now, as I indicated under the principles and in my opening remarks, these heritage buildings that we have are an economic resource for this province. Tourists come here to see the heritage that we have. They come to see our oceans as well and our beaches but to have the lovely Nova Scotia villages that we have is part of the attraction to this province, so it's very important for the tourism industry.

It's also important for Nova Scotians' own sense of who we are and the history that we have around us. It gives us pride in the communities that we live in. There's no question that it does cost more to maintain these buildings and when they're maintained by the individual homeowners, the whole community benefits as a result. Our position is that there should be some community assistance to people who maintain these buildings.

Most of the other jurisdictions in the world do have these provisions where there is tax relief or there is some kind of benefits available and there are some available here in Nova Scotia but they're very paltry. There's 7 per cent PST exemption for external building materials, there's a grant of $1,000 available to heritage property owners. There's also the City of Halifax that has some grants. The grants, as I understand it, can go up to about $5,000 but the difficulty is that the city might allocate anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a year for the whole city, so it doesn't really help out too much. I think that there has to be some real consideration given to some financial relief or tax relief to people who do maintain these buildings for the general good.

Lastly, under education, we feel that we are losing a lot of the skills of the tradespeople to restore these buildings. We think that there should be some post-secondary education courses in building restoration given in this province, probably through the community schools after high school. They might be someplace like Lunenburg or Bridgewater, or the Annapolis Valley, I think, that it would be a good service to the province and create some jobs for people.

There is a course right now in Algonquin College in Ottawa, I think, in their sub-campus outside of Ottawa, where they do teach these courses. I think I would recommend that the Department of Education here institute such a thing. We also think that the high

school curriculum should have an architectural course, perhaps, in Grades 10, 11 and 12 so that people can learn a little bit about the background of what's around them because you appreciate it a lot more if you understand it.

So those are my comments and, as I said, I would like to enter into a discourse and answer any questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Duffus, do you have any comments to make before we open the floor?

MR. GRAEME DUFFUS: There's not enough time for the comments I would like to make. (Laughter) Thank you very much for the opportunity.

I want to go a little further in about sustainability in relation to heritage buildings. Demolition of a building is a very wasteful process. We not only fill up our landfills, but we waste materials and we have to generate new materials, and that's not what we call green today. The preservation of heritage properties creates more jobs which is a very important economic driver. Usually the proportion of new construction is roughly 50/50 in material and labour. Restoration processes tend to be more 60-65/35-40 per cent. So it's a much more logical process. It does create jobs.

We need trades, again, to fulfill those roles. One of the trades we did set up in Nova Scotia was the Apprenticeship and Trades Qualifications Act and general regulations in 1984. That was a result of us not having any stonemasons in the province, in the process of restoring Province House. We trained 12 Nova Scotians but it appears as if it's becoming a non-functional Act in that it doesn't seem as if it's certifying people anymore or providing the opportunity for trades to get training. I know the stonemason union has been trying to get it reactivated. There's a competitive problem for them as well. So we are in danger, in just one generation, of actually losing that trade again if we don't watch what we're doing, if we don't provide the support that we need. I would urge you to support these kinds of endeavours. There simply is the loss of trade risk that we're facing in the near future. We have more and more need for these kinds of trades.

[9:30 a.m.]

I wanted to touch on the fact that the province has another department that manages its heritage buildings. It's the Department of Transportation and Public Works. It is charged with the responsibility of maintaining the heritage properties the province owns. It doesn't have any link whatsoever with the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage. There is no connection between the two. There's no advisory group to determine how we maintain and manage our buildings. We don't have a management process for the maintenance and management of Province House or Government House, something I've been advocating for over 10 years, since I was involved with Government House.

Those kinds of decisions within a department like that need to be made by people who have experience and backgrounds that relate to the proper maintenance of a heritage resource like that. There's nobody within that department who actually is a conservation architect or has conservation training. The result is that when it comes to maintaining the properties, there is no effort or understanding as to what is an appropriate maintenance procedure for those buildings. Consequently, RFPs that are put out for consulting services don't tend to have the international standards. We are signatories to the Venice Charter, which was done in 1964, and is an international standard.

We should have more input into the maintenance and restoration and repair of our properties. It seems to me that the department really treats our heritage properties from a conceptual point of view, the same as we do our bridges and our warehouses. They don't give them a special place; they don't treat them in the same way. I'm being a little bit hard on them in that sense. They do have a sense, but they don't seem to have procedures and policies that would indicate that. Tell me if I don't have any more time.

I also wanted to mention - I know it's not built heritage in the truest sense of the word - the Special Places Protection Act. There have been two abuses of the Act where there was an attempt to make a charge against an individual who desecrated a special place. There was an attempt made to charge the individuals, and the Prosecutor's Office chose not to proceed with prosecution - and it was blatant - because they felt the Act was not adequate in order to get a conviction. I would ask you to consider the Act and its need for an upgrading and a stiffening of its conditions. That's one other item I wanted to mention.

Just one last thing I wanted to touch on. I think one of the problems we have, conceptually, is that property owners consider that their home is their castle. Just as we don't have a right to a driver's licence in this province - it's a privilege - people who own buildings are really custodians of those buildings. They come and go; the buildings stay on. The owners of buildings today aren't the original owners or builders of the buildings. The reason we register these properties is to protect them. For somebody to simply buy a property and consider that it has a better use or a more economic use for them, because it may have a larger property or because of its location, and be able to tear it down within one year is going to ensure that we're going to lose more and more of these properties.

Since 1970, we've lost about 25 per cent of our heritage properties in this country. It is astounding. If we don't do something to protect our heritage properties, we are going to lose so many more. That is going to be a major black mark on this country. Those are just my comments.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Raymond.

MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you very much, both of you, for coming in. It's nice to see you again. Well, it's nice to see you, but in a way it's kind of disheartening

because I'm hearing things that people have been saying in this community for a very long time. I'm hearing you say that we need to, in fact, be looking at the interiors of buildings as well as the exteriors, that we need to have some kind of independent and qualified review of buildings, and that we need to be showing some kind of respect for the built heritage of this place. You look at the situation on the peninsula today, and in some ways Nova Scotia, if it were a museum, would have a great deal to be ashamed of, because these buildings, our built heritage is, in effect, a series of big artifacts, and we're not taking good care of them, as you say.

One of the things that I was wondering about, you say there are probably about 300 - and I have several questions, I hope this is okay - provincially-registered buildings in the province. As you say, that does afford some measure of protection, with greater than that of municipal. Do you have any idea how many municipally-designated buildings there are outside of, say, the peninsula core, in the rest of the province?

MR. PARISH: We did do a survey of those a couple of years ago. Peter Delefes did it. My recollection is that it's over 1,000.

MS. RAYMOND: And these are the municipal ones?

MR. PARISH: Yes. I can't remember how many over 1,000, but I think there are quite a few. There's a great difference around the province. Digby County does a great job. They've got a lot of registered properties, and other counties have very few. So it's hit and miss.

MS. RAYMOND: If there's not a heritage advisory committee in place in a given municipality, what are the avenues for protection of a building? You cannot get a municipal registration. Am I right in thinking that an awful lot of municipalities in this province don't actually have any kind of . . .

MR. PARISH: I wouldn't say a lot, but there are some.

MS. RAYMOND: Quite a few.

MR. PARISH: My recollection would be maybe five or so.

MS. RAYMOND: Do you have any way of being in contact with the members of that community, as to buildings which might be considered for registration - provincial registration, since there's no municipal avenue?

MR. PARISH: We haven't done that yet.

MR. DUFFUS: We're working on a database.

MS. RAYMOND: You don't have any kind of governmental support in doing this? There's nothing that is being done in order to . . .

MR. DUFFUS: It's all volunteerism.

MS. RAYMOND: So if you're not in an area with a municipal heritage body, then it's up for grabs.

MR. DUFFUS: We do have a communities chair and committee, and that person goes around the province speaking with groups, finding out what the issues are and the problems, and we try to assist as much as we can.

MS. RAYMOND: But it's a group of volunteers based in Halifax who have essentially been left with the responsibility of being custodians.

MR. PARISH: They're not just based in Halifax. They're people from all around the province.

MS. RAYMOND: What kind of support could the province be giving you in this?

MR. PARISH: Well, in the end it's financial support for the different projects that really makes things happen. We're not looking for money ourselves, but we would be looking for the province to put money towards some financial assistance to heritage homeowners, we would be asking the province to maybe put some money towards making sure there are heritage advisory committees in every jurisdiction.

More than anything else, we need stronger legislation to protect the buildings. That's not a financial issue, that's just something that the province has to do. The stark reality is that there's not a jurisdiction in the world that has protected its heritage buildings, other than through legislation. There's no place in the world where the homeowners all just kind of agree that nobody is going to tear anything down and change it. It's always done through legislation. You go to wonderful places like Paris or you go to parts of Spain or you go to Marblehead, Massachusetts or you go to Quebec City, all these places, they're all very carefully controlled as to what you can do. There's really no other way to do it. We've been fortunate in a way that we still have left what we have, with literally no protection. We feel it's time that something takes place to save what we have.

MS. RAYMOND: I should probably turn it over to somebody else.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I have people on the list, and we can come back to you later.

Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: First of all I would like to thank you for taking the time, coming in as volunteers today, to meet with us. This is a very important topic. Just a couple of things. Some of these questions, you may not be able to answer. I can't understand why we've got two levels of these heritage properties. It has always made me wonder why we just don't have a provincial system that does this, rather than a municipal-provincial. You've said there are holes in the law that should be changed and some assistance to people who maintain these homes. A regular home is expensive enough to maintain, never mind if you've got to get some special moulding made for around a window or special windows made to replace a window. Could you bring me some history on that, why it has been two levels of government involved in that? Do you know?

MR. PARISH: The Heritage Property Act came in - I'm going to say - early 1980s, maybe 1982.

MR. DUFFUS: I think 1982.

MR. PARISH: Before that we had no protection, before 1982. When the Act came in, then it contemplated this dual registration system, provincial and municipal. We've lived with what we've got ever since. If you wanted to make them all provincially registered, I would think that could happen; funnel them all into the one system. But you'd need a little bit more administrative help than you've got now to make it work.

MR. COLWELL: I understand that. It just seems like it's strange that you have just sort of a dual system that really is not addressing the true problem of maintaining and making sure that these valuable properties are still there.

MR. DUFFUS: Some properties are actually dually-registered, both municipally and provincially. Provincial tends to be a higher registration because it's more significant.

MR. COLWELL: I know I have friends from Europe. When they come here they say we really have no ancient history here, which we don't. If we lose these buildings we're going to even lose that, what history we do have.

You also talked about training people to restore these properties. It's quite a significant problem, I would think, because if you're going to replace something that's there that the technology has changed to a point that the technology is taking over and you really can't restore some of these things, you really have to train people.

You talked about a program that's in Ontario, I believe?

MR. PARISH: Right.

MR. COLWELL: Is that at the community college, or is that a two-year program or one-year?

MR. PARISH: Yes, it's a community college program, Algonquin College in Ottawa and in Perth, Ontario. That's where the sub-campus is. They train - they have courses in restoring post and beam houses or single-glazed windows, and different things that you'd run into when you're restoring a house.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, because that's an art that a lot of people have lost, I think.

MR. PARISH: Right.

MR. COLWELL: You go to a store and buy a new thermal pane, you shove it in and you're done. There's no painting or anything left to do with it.

MR. PARISH: Yes.

MR. COLWELL: That has been a problem, I think, right across the board in this province, not just there but the trades training, I think, is very poor today. That's one reason that we lose a lot of young people that go out West and get better training and more experience than they can here.

How big is your group?

MR. PARISH: We have a board of directors of approximately 25. Membership is about 300, Sandy? Sandy is our membership chairman.

MS. SANDRA SACKETT: I would say more, 345.

MR. PARISH: About 345 members all across the province.

MR. COLWELL: That's quite a significant lobbying group. I can imagine you have them from all backgrounds, which is great, when you go through this process.

MR. PARISH: Yes.

MR. COLWELL: I, too, believe that the laws have to be tightened up and things have to be changed to protect these properties because, as we lose them, they're gone for good and the value - especially in Halifax now, the value of land is getting so high. I know one building, in particular, that a developer bought and paid a huge amount of money for it and said, you guys can use it as long as you want but I own the building now. I mean, that tells you what the property is coming, in value, so it's very difficult.

If there was one thing that you could get done, one thing, what would it be, one wish that you could get done?

MR. PARISH: Stronger demolition controls.

MR. COLWELL: That says it pretty well, doesn't it? It's pretty straightforward. That is a problem because once something is gone, it's gone.

MR. PARISH: That's right. It's lost forever.

MR. COLWELL: Has there been any effort by your organization to maintain - if a building is coming down that isn't a heritage property, and for whatever reason nobody is interested in retaining some of the - woodwork, the windows that come out of it, the trim, the doors, staircases, or anything that might be valued, down the road - to another property that might be restored?

MR. PARISH: Absolutely. I can give you two examples but I should preface it by saying that in the past, I would say 10 years now, we have had Renovators Resource here in Halifax which do take old building materials and recycle them, which is terrific, and they seem to be able to make a dollar at it and stay in business which is great.

[9:45 a.m.]

There is a lovely, I would say, 1830 post and beam cape in Brookfield on the highway, right behind the Tim Hortons. The lady was going to have to sell it. Tim Hortons was going to buy it and buy the lot. She contacted the Trust because we do have some notoriety in the province. She contacted the Trust for some help. So we first investigated as to whether we could pick the building up and move it. That's very expensive. You have to take the wires down and all that kind of stuff. That didn't work out.

We contacted - there's a fellow - a couple of people in the Valley who do take buildings apart, then sell the frames and recycle the materials. We contacted them and now he's going to be taking the building down and recycling the material.

There was a house in Falmouth that we were contacted on last year. This is probably, originally, a pre-1800 house, one of the original Planters, down by the river. By the time we got there, the firemen had been using it as practice on putting out fires. It was in pretty rough shape. But we went through it to see what could be saved. We got the same people who saved materials to contact this lady to see if something could be worked out. I think, in the end, that building is just going to be taken down. But we do what we can to save the materials of old houses, or move them if we can.

MR. COLWELL: I'm glad to hear that - and I know about some of these companies that do this and I think that's great because they do preserve some of the materials.

I was thinking even further than that, where you might have a particular building that may have some - like the old post and beam, the hand-hewn beams in it that could be used to restore a building that is of a similar character, of a similar time, that you might actually use that beam to restore a heritage property down the road. I know you need resources to do that. That's an issue.

MR. PARISH: Well, it's here in this province, you should know that. Sandy and I bought a post and beam house in the Valley last year, 1835, with hand-hewn beams. All of that is pegged together, the whole thing. It needs a lot of restoration. It has sliding glass doors in it now. Somebody had taken out some of the beams on the top floor to raise the ceiling.

We went to this fellow in Avondale - you see him by the highway - Andrew Bland. He has old beams out in his yard. We bought seven or eight beams and we're going to put them in our house to replace the ones that were taken out. So people should know that there is that capability in this province, if there are people recycling materials. Not many people know that but they're out there.

MR. DUFFUS: Can I give an aside to that. There is a fellow who actually makes a living taking down barns and selling the frames. That's positive and negative because what's happening is, barns are being sought after in the United States and they're being taken down to the United States and re-erected because they appreciate the value of the old frames. But we're losing those barns.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, and that's a problem because someday you may need those - like I say, to do exactly what you've done, you need the beams - back in Nova Scotia and they were from Nova Scotia. Even though it's not original, it still puts a building back to very near original and makes a difference.

MR. PARISH: Yes.

MR. COLWELL: That's it, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein.

MR. EPSTEIN: Thank you and thank you to both the witnesses. This was a very helpful presentation. I wonder if you have any details on buildings that have been demolished in Nova Scotia, buildings that were either designated as heritage buildings and were, presumably, under either the municipal or provincial designation, but nonetheless allowed to be demolished, or buildings that were demolished before they got the chance to actually be registered. Can you give us some examples of some buildings? I was struck, actually - I

think, Mr. Duffus, you were the one who said it was 25 per cent, you thought, of the built heritage across - that was a national figure was it?

MR. DUFFUS: In 2004, Heritage Canada did a survey and they said it was somewhere between 21 and 23 per cent. I'm saying, since then, it has increased, I'm sure.

MR. EPSTEIN: Are there any details about that in Nova Scotia, how that would play out here?

MR. PARISH: I don't think so, Howard. I don't think a whole lot of registered buildings have been demolished. What usually happens is that the developers will find buildings that aren't registered and take those down without them getting registered. I've done my own little kind of survey of pictures. I try to take pictures of the buildings before they come down, and I intend to go to HRM Council at some point in the near future to put the pictures up on the screen and say remember this, remember that?

Just recently we lost the YWCA building, on Morris Street we lost a building there where Letson Court is going up, and there's another one that's going to come down shortly. They weren't registered. The old Irving station at the corner of Dresden Row and Sackville came down. We did manage to save, by the Public Gardens, the old Summer Gardens building. It's mostly a new building now, but at least people, in the future, will be able to see what looks like used to be there.

But around the corner, if you remember that corner at Summer and Spring Garden, there were a couple of grey buildings with stained glass in them, and they're gone. Then set back there was a lovely little commercial building with posts, a veranda out in front. They go one by one. You think that, oh well, it's only another one. But when you sit back after a couple of years and you realize what we've lost, then it starts to add up.

MR. EPSTEIN: I wonder if you can tell me about the Barrington Street Heritage District proposal. Can you just tell me exactly what that is? This is clearly an HRM-focused item, but I know it's current and I wonder if you could just explain what that is.

MR. PARISH: Well, I'll do my best, and Graeme can jump in. There has been a lot of work done to create a heritage district on Barrington Street. It runs, essentially, from City Hall down, I think, now past Government House. There is some talk of expanding it in the future, and it goes off on the side streets a little bit if necessary, but mostly it's on Barrington Street.

It has controls on changes to the buildings. Restoration work has to be in keeping with the architecture. My understanding about the demolition issue is that instead of there being a one-year delay, they've managed to increase it to either two or three. I forget, do you know?

MR. DUFFUS: Yes, it has certainly increased.

MR. PARISH: It's an increase to either two or three years, which we, ourselves, aren't happy with, because we wanted there to be some, as I said, administrative body to decide whether some of the old buildings on Barrington Street can come down. As I understand the proposal, one of the owners could still take a building down with sufficient notice to the city, with no other intrusion on that.

MR. EPSTEIN: I guess I'm wondering what the point is about a heritage district, is there a distinction between that and individual buildings being designated?

MR. PARISH: Well, if you're in the district, then you're subject to the controls, rather than building by building. That's really very important, because the joy of a heritage building is much greater when it's in a group of heritage buildings than if it's just a heritage building next to a skyscraper. It's important. It's also important because you're more likely to feel comfortable putting money into restoring your heritage building if the guy next door is going to do the same. You don't want to put all your money into your nice building and restore it when the next guy is going to put picture windows in the front. It ruins the whole idea of what you're trying to create. So there is a community aspect to this, which is the joy of a heritage district, that now everybody on the street will know that everybody else is going to be working in the same direction.

MR. EPSTEIN: Good point. Can I ask about your point about the possibility of controls for the interior of buildings? I saw that that was one of your recommendations. I'm wondering if you could just expand on that a bit, and in particular I'm wondering how that would interact with, say, building code restrictions.

MR. DUFFUS: I actually was asked by Brian Cuthbertson, before he left the heritage end of it and that was quite a few years ago - I tried to find my file, and I was unable to find it. The essence of it is that the Province of Ontario - I think it's the Ontario Heritage Association, I forget exactly what it's called - has a program where they protect the interiors of buildings. It is somewhat a voluntary program in the sense that owners of properties who have an interior that they believe is precious and is as important as the exterior of the buildings, they have the opportunity of having an easement put on it to protect it. It's the same way a right-of-way or an easement on a property can be put on. It goes with the land, it protects the interior artifact, room or whatever it happens to be, that is designated as being worthy of saving. It goes on with the property as it changes hands in the future. So it's a way of protecting those features.

Heritage properties aren't just the exterior of the buildings. There are so many fine interiors and unique interiors. We have an incredible history of wealth in this province, and in days where people were able to import materials, and craftsmen, and we have incredible interiors to a lot of our buildings. Those are not protected by anything at this moment and

somebody can buy a property, come in and rip out all of those features and turn it into flats. Those elements are lost forever.

If the building is worthy of registration, certainly it's worthy of protection. Those features that are important inside are just as important sometimes as the exterior, sometimes more important. They go with, even, the history of the people who occupied the building. So we should have the opportunity to do that in our legislation.

MR. EPSTEIN: And how does that interact with building code issues?

MR. DUFFUS: I'm not sure, it has been a while since I've read it. This is quite a while ago that Ontario had done this. As I say, it's a registered easement and I guess it would be controlled the same as you would under a municipal property, through the same board. Halifax would be the Heritage Advisory Committee. If it's a provincial registered property, it would be by the provincial Heritage Advisory Committee.

MR. EPSTEIN: Actually, I think for the most part, there probably wouldn't be much conflict. But anyway, okay. Do I have time for one more question?

MR. CHAIRMAN: One more, yes.

MR. EPSTEIN: Okay. I wondered about the one-year delay, this built-in feature of the existing legislation. It always seemed to me that one of the ways in which it operated was to allow either the municipality or the province - well, the municipality, really, because it's the one year that applies there - the opportunity to try to find a solution that would work for the owner of the building if they gave notice of their intention to demolish. I've seen that played out in a number of ways. I've seen examples where tenants have been found for the building. I've seen examples where the possibility of municipal purchase has also come up and I think it has actually been acted on sometimes.

I'm wondering if you can give us any kind of picture as to whether the municipalities around Nova Scotia have actually purchased any of the designated heritage buildings as part of their attempt to find a solution when the owner comes along and says they're intending to demolish, or indeed, whether the province has ever stepped in if there's an intention to demolish?

MR. DUFFUS: One of the finest examples of that would be the Carleton Hotel, where an application was made for deregistration and it took quite an effort to prove the authenticity of the building. There was an argument there that it wasn't the original building of the Honourable Richard Bulkeley, the Father of the Province, by the way - and research proved that it was. The original building was there and it's the oldest residence in the city, and it's the oldest known building in the city. The Heritage Trust actually called a public meeting to find out what the public could provide in the way of input. The City of Halifax,

to their credit, provided funding to maintain the property, to enable the process to proceed. Heritage Trust put money into that as well.

The end result was, that through the public hearing, public meeting, a buyer came forward with an idea how to re-use the building. It was purchased and it was renovated. Consequently, it has been saved. I think it's safe to say that it wouldn't be demolished.

Now, the consequences of allowing that building to be deregistered and consequently demolished - could you imagine if we put another Joe Howe Building on the south side of St. Paul's Church in Grand Parade? The Joe Howe Building was a mistake. It should have never been built on the south side of Province House. We should have had a protected area around Province House. We didn't have the foresight in those days and we shouldn't allow that to happen around our important public sites, our Public Gardens, our Grand Parades and those kinds of things. We need to protect the integrity of the sites. Unfortunately, that was a very positive effort and it took all levels, I think, to achieve that.

MR. EPSTEIN: Thank you very much.

[10:00 a.m.]

MR. PARISH: If I could just add to that. Currently the same issue was ongoing before HRM Council last Tuesday night. There is a property on Shore Drive in Dartmouth that's registered. It's a Georgian house down by the water. The owner, I believe - I'm not certain but I believe he intends to demolish it. He has applied for deregistration. That came before the council on Tuesday night and the council moved it ahead for two weeks so that they could investigate whether the city would buy it and do something with it. That's currently ongoing right now on that issue.

MR. EPSTEIN: Okay, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for being here today, both of you. It's really interesting and I think it's important for all of us to, again, be reminded of what the current process is and how it's not really serving the purpose of preserving our built heritage here in the province. I found it very interesting just going through the details of that.

I had quite a few questions here, actually. One, I would like to explore a little bit about the Advisory Committee on Heritage Property. I understand they have been meeting more regularly. I made an inquiry before coming and they said, I think, that they met quarterly last year. Is that your understanding?

MR. PARISH: I think they are meeting more regularly now, yes.

MS. WHALEN: Yes. We had done a Private Member's Bill about two years ago - I think it was in 2004 - to request that. Not that that was moved forward, but perhaps it might have gotten them, at least, alert to the need to move. The delays seem really very harmful to anybody who is trying to make changes or improve their properties when you have those kind of delays. I mean, just even to get answers. As you say, you've been waiting three years and, mind you, you've got a policy issue that they have a problem with.

MR. PARISH: Yes.

MS. WHALEN: That was one concern, just the fact that if you want to do anything you've got these huge delays. Is that discouraging people from taking steps who might otherwise be restoring and improving their properties in the heritage sense?

MR. PARISH: Well, I think that the people who want to register their properties, they're usually people who are going to keep them and maintain them as heritage properties. The issue is, what happens when somebody buys a heritage property that didn't register it and they've got other plans for the building? That happened just recently in Halifax with a developer who bought a property and wanted to make a substantial alteration to it. The Heritage Trust opposed the alterations but it was passed by HRM Council. He then applied to the Heritage Advisory Committee and met great delays. Although we opposed the amendments, I wrote to the minister, now the Premier, telling him that we were on side with the developer, that even though we disagree with what he's doing, we agree with his right to get an answer. I don't know where that sits at the moment, to be honest with you.

MS. WHALEN: That's right. On the municipal side, it would appear that there's greater transparency, at least, on the discussion of the buildings and that it's brought before council with a report. I was previously on city council and I remember the reports were quite detailed about what were the unique features, the people who had lived in the buildings and so on.

I'm quite concerned about the lack of transparency in the process you describe for provincial buildings, provincially-designated buildings, that the committee meets in secret, that the reports are confidential and the recommendations are confidential and we don't know what the minister's recommendation is either, as that minister takes it to Cabinet.

MR. PARISH: I should say, that's my understanding. I haven't checked the legislation. We haven't actually knocked on the door and asked to go in but in speaking to people that I know on the committee, that's my understanding.

MS. WHALEN: In terms of the Advisory Council, I was wondering if they have a relationship with the Heritage Trust and if you ever have an opportunity to meet them and just raise issues. I mean, clearly, your group has a lot of expertise. Do they ever talk to you?

MR. PARISH: Not formally. There is currently one member of the Heritage Trust who's on the Heritage Advisory Committee. We get some information but there's this confidentiality issue that has to be observed, as I understand it, as well. They'll go and make a decision and they're not at liberty to tell us what the decision is, type of thing.

MS. WHALEN: Do you feel then you're often in the position of having to check all the Orders in Council that come out to see what major thing has happened that's now a done deal, that's outside of your hands?

MR. PARISH: Well, we haven't done that.

MS. WHALEN: You haven't?

MR. PARISH: That could be the only way - you know, usually, in the community, you find out what's going on but . . .

MS. WHALEN: Yes. But still, there isn't information being made readily available to those that are most concerned. I've actually had a similar situation when it comes to Crown land and Crown land disposal. I'm thinking more of wilderness land and that sort of thing. If you want to find out if pieces of it are being sold, bought or exchanged, the only way to see is to go through those Orders in Council but it's already passed once that has happened. That doesn't give you a good sense that you can have public input or control at all, in terms of how these things are done. So I think there is a need to, maybe, review, at least, what the process is. I think that you have flagged that today which is good.

On the issue of demolition, I'm wondering - this is just an idea - if it has been discussed. Just to go back a step, what concerns me is sometimes when buildings pass the one-year mark and they're knocked down, sometimes nothing happens in the meantime and you end up with an empty vacant lot which is really unsightly and it might sit there for a long time. I'm wondering if it would be better if the process was made more public so that before any building can come down there has to be a redevelopment approval in place, so that, that way, there could be discussion around the current value of what's there versus what's being proposed, and nothing would go forward unless you actually knew that there was a plan in place and it was going to happen in reasonable time.

MR. PARISH: That sounds like a logical idea. That way, before the demolition was allowed, the community would know what's going up in its place and it would make the owner, I think, feel some responsibility to make it more compatible with the surrounding buildings.

As I understand it, at the HRM, after your one year of waiting, you then have a year to take the building down. If you don't take it down within a year, then you have to apply again and go through waiting another year. You're right. Once the person gets past the first year, even if he doesn't have any plans for the property, in order that he doesn't have to go through the process again, sometimes they just tear them down.

MS. WHALEN: Having gone over the hurdle once they just think, let's deal with that stage.

MR. PARISH: Right, yes.

MS. WHALEN: I think it's really offensive for people to see empty lots and land that is not being used when there was something there previously that had value. It's just something I thought we should, perhaps, look at a little bit.

I'm interested in the work that's going on at Province House right now. That has been going on a long time and all of us are in and out of that building frequently. I know we talked a little bit - Mr. Duffus, you mentioned about the lack of skilled trades. Are you aware at all how that renovation is going and how it's being managed?

MR. DUFFUS: Well, my firm was responsible for the renovations in 1984 through 1987 and that was when we had to actually bring in British masons and train Nova Scotians to do the work.

The same people that were in that process were involved in that project. I wasn't involved in the project because I have chosen not to work for the province because of what I consider to be problems with their management of their buildings. It was undertaken by another firm but it was the same masons working, generally, on the stone repairs.

It's 20 years. Deterioration to these buildings is a constant problem and they need maintenance. It was probably 10 years overdue doing some pointing and the result was, it probably cost more to do the repairs this year and last year than it would have if they had done some regular maintenance on the building. It's a very precious building. The site is precious and it's under study as we speak. There is a process to look at that whole precinct, including Grand Parade, which is excellent. That's what we need. There's the issue of parking in those sites as well which is a hot topic.

Yes, we have a few of the British masons. They've gone down to the United States where they are in very high demand. I make a living restoring and repairing masonry buildings and I can tell you as a fact, we have a very limited number of masons that are qualified to do the work here in Nova Scotia. We basically have only two firms that do the work and they generally are the only ones that do all the work.

We presently have a firm from New Brunswick that is trying to get into the market here. It's a healthy thing because we need competitive processes to some degree but we need qualifications to go with it. Frankly, I've had to just change the requirements of my specifications to eliminate their requirements to conform to the Nova Scotia Trade Act because it's problematic. It's not being followed through and people aren't getting the training. Therefore, to demand that they have certification in Nova Scotia or be certifiable is very difficult today to require and that's unfortunate.

MS. WHALEN: So we have taken that step backward then.

MR. DUFFUS: We're taking a step backward.

MS. WHALEN: In order to do the work you have to look for exemptions to that Act.

MR. DUFFUS: Yes. We have to allow other people to be able to come in; it's free trade as well. But we also want to make sure that they're qualified.

MS. WHALEN: I just have another question for Mr. Parish, if I could. That is, when we have some of this lovely built heritage - I'm thinking of City Hall, in particular, at this moment, thinking of our public buildings. City Hall is beautifully lit in the evening. It's got lights on it and I think it looks great. It draws people's attention to it in the night. I'm wondering about any policy or any sense about whether we should be doing more of that. It's a way to highlight our buildings.

MR. PARISH: Well, anything that draws attention to our lovely buildings is a positive because it makes people appreciate them more but I'm not aware of any current policy in place in that regard.

MS. WHALEN: Even for the Trust, would you like to see more buildings lit at night?

MR. PARISH: I think, yes, it depends on where they are. You know, you have to be careful to some degree, perhaps, about the neighbours but some place like City Hall sounds like it works, and perhaps some others in downtown.

MS. WHALEN: Yes. I'm thinking, specifically, of Province House which I think is kind of - it's not as well known as it should be for Nova Scotians. I think, too often, we drive by it and it's not seen. It was just crossing my mind in the midst of this renovation.

MR. PARISH: I think if you got rid of the parking you would get people to notice it a lot more.

MS. WHALEN: Very good, yes. (Laughter) I have one other question, if I could. Do I have a moment?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, yes.

MS. WHALEN: Penalties. I wanted to talk about penalties within our legislation. Again, Mr. Duffus, you mentioned about the Special Places Protection Act, that they felt it was so weak that, in fact, a number of prosecutions didn't go forward. That indicates they don't even have the strength to move it through a system. But are there any significant penalties for not following our Acts, our Heritage Property Act or our Special Places Protection Act?

MR. DUFFUS: There are penalties in the Special Places Protection Act that are quite substantial. I think it's up to $10,000 for an individual and up to $100,000 for a corporation. But unless you can prosecute them and get a conviction you can't impose a penalty, obviously.

MS. WHALEN: Okay.

MR. DUFFUS: I'll tell you what site we're talking about. We're talking about the Fort Sackville site. I advised the owner where the original buildings on the site were after I did research on it on a Wednesday, and by Saturday, he went in there with a bulldozer, he bulldozed the site and removed all the artifacts underground.

MS. WHALEN: Okay.

MR. DUFFUS: You can't be more blatant than that.

MS. WHALEN: Even with the evidence available, it wasn't strong enough?

MR. DUFFUS: I thought he was honest and interested in what was there, and where it was. I made the mistake of telling him where it was.

MS. WHALEN: Okay. What about under the Heritage Property Act? Do you think we should be looking at stronger penalties if people ignore that? Perhaps you don't have examples of people ignoring. . .

MR. PARISH: I don't know of any prosecutions under the Act. I don't know if it's the type of Act that has specific penalty clauses. It probably might have just the general catchall clause at the end of the Act, saying that it's an offence to violate the Act, but I'm not aware of any convictions under the Act.

MS. WHALEN: Okay, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Raymond.

MS. RAYMOND: Thank you. So many things have come up here recently. I guess the thing that really stands out is, you mentioned the kind of protection that heritage buildings are given in other jurisdictions. One has just too many examples of people coming to Nova Scotia and seeing what is being taken down quite recklessly, it would seem. It's a little bit of a laughing stock in times when it's impossible to get recognition or designation for something that turns out to be of, literally, worldwide significance. Then we come back and have a look at the building and say, oh, yes, or that would have been significant. It seems to me that is particularly an issue in the areas where development pressures are really increasing. Peninsular Halifax is, of course, one of those.

We're dealing with the issue right now of the view planes and so on from the Citadel and all the rest of this. I have understood that the municipality, at least - and I don't know whether it was municipal only or provincial - at one point had a policy that if a building was taken down from a property, that the designation of that property did not automatically disappear. Now, does that policy still exist? Is it being followed? Is there any question of legislatively enshrining that so that there is protection for the site and the view shed of the surrounding buildings? Do you know the status of that at the moment?

MR. DUFFUS: Presently, the site is still protected until it is deregistered.

MS. RAYMOND: Okay. But, yet, all of this is under consideration at this moment and deregistration hasn't happened yet. It seems to be almost an academic point.

MR. DUFFUS: There are certainly some sites that have been deregistered. There was the old Infirmary site, an apartment building is on it today. That was a fire situation.

MS. RAYMOND: Yes, okay.

MR. DUFFUS: There are other sites that buildings have been condemned.

MS. RAYMOND: Is there any consistency in the application of this policy? That's what I guess I'm trying to figure out.

MR. DUFFUS: The registration includes the land. There are some properties where there is a designated area of the land. For example, Thornvale. Not the entire site is registered with the property. That's provincially registered. A designated area of the site is registered with the building.

[10:15 a.m.]

MS. RAYMOND: Are applications for de-designation ever denied? If the owner goes in and says, okay, I'd like this de-designated, either the land or the building, are they denied?

MR. DUFFUS: Actually, I think originally, I don't know if it was denied, I think it was a question that the Irving Station was registered against the wishes of the owner. The city did that, but then they did deregister it when it came under development pressure.

MS. RAYMOND: So there's no hold that goes with it. I guess one of the things that that says to me, too, is you talked about the Ontario practice of protecting with heritage governance or heritage easements and so on. Has there been any discussion of legislative support for that? Obviously in order to hold an easement, somebody, like the trust or the government itself, actually has to be the one to hold that. But it does in fact diminish the economic value of a site if there is a contractual obligation not to take away a particular specified fireplace, although everything else around it can go. Has there been any discussion of financial recognition and legislative ability for these particular items to be protected? This would be interiors; this could be other land as well.

MR. PARISH: Two points to make there. When I first became president, which is now about three years ago, I met with Rodney MacDonald and Bill Greenlaw and had a good talk about changes to the legislation. We would have talked at the time about legislation to protect interiors as well as stronger legislation for exteriors. After that I met with the Liberal caucus, at the time, and there was the Private Member's Bill that came out that Ms. Whalen mentioned, perhaps a year ago, maybe two years ago now, that didn't get passed. I think that might have some provisions about interior designations.

MS. RAYMOND: It did, yes.

MR. PARISH: We've been attempting to make that happen, but so far without success. The second point is that there is an Act called the Conservation Easements Act, and that applies to, usually, wildlife areas. The way that works is that there are certain organizations in the province, like Ducks Unlimited or the Nature Trust, that are the bodies that can hold the easement. I recently wrote to, I think it was former Minister Hurlburt and I got a letter back from Brooke Taylor, I guess recently, who is the new minister in charge of that. We've asked that the Heritage Trust can go on as one of the bodies that can be the beneficiary of a conservation easement, to see if we can fit within that Statute to perhaps register or preserve some buildings and the settings that they're in under that Act. So that's ongoing as we speak.

MS. RAYMOND: Well, I'd be very interested to hear. That's a really important thing, because we're giving so little financial support or encouragement to the people who are willing to make these big concessions over the property that they hold. There are, of course, those great favorites - it was interesting, you mentioned the YWCA building, which was one of those many public buildings that we have on the peninsula in which there was huge architectural investment, and they are just gone. In fact there was a whole cluster down around here.

There is that export market in interiors and in frames and so on. If things are in fact seen to be of value once they're removed, of value enough to take from the province, it's a great shame that we're not protecting them. I hope that will in fact add another tool to enable us to protect some of this, or encourage people to protect them.

Again, to Transportation and Public Works, is there any kind of a review process that goes on if a public building is to be divested the way there's the federal FHBRO? Does the provincial government look at its own holdings and say, okay, does this have heritage significance before divesting? Do you know?

MR. DUFFUS: I'm not aware of there being any organized effort on that. The Law Courts, for example, I believe have committees that look at their building and how it should be managed and have issues that they deal with, but they're not really into the building heritage conservation aspect I don't think, it's more of a use kind of committee. Alan North was actually asked to start with Mrs. Stevenson, who used to be the director of the museum, a committee that would be responsible for any changes to Government House and Province House - Government House was one of the focuses - so that there would be a management process and a review process put in place. But it wasn't funded, and it has pretty much disbanded.

An example of the kinds of things that can happen when you don't have any controls, the people will come and do maintenance on a building like Government House, and they don't have anyone in the department to review it who has any expertise in heritage conservation, so they might go in there and just do a repair. Shortly after we did the restoration there was a leak in one of the old pieces of plumbing, and the carpenters came in and took a skill saw and cut right through one of the raised panels in the basement to get access to the pipe. They should have a manual that tells them what they can or cannot do, what procedures they should follow, and they should have a group to make decisions of any substantial alterations to buildings of that nature. It can't be just left to somebody who comes in to do a repair.

MS. RAYMOND: But if a courthouse in a small town in southwest Nova Scotia becomes redundant, it can just go, there's no review process that says yes, this may be of significance or not?

MR. DUFFUS: Provincially, in that department?

MS. RAYMOND: Yes.

MR. DUFFUS: I think they pretty much do what they want to do. They do have an appreciation for their heritage, but . . .

MS. RAYMOND: But the province itself doesn't look . . .

MR. DUFFUS: . . . it's internal and it's subjective to who the deputy minister of the day might be and the project architect or the project officer, whoever it is they assigned to the deal, to the project and what his background might be.

MS. RAYMOND: I guess the last thing that I would say is that where these development pressures are really intensifying, I would really encourage everybody, when negotiating for development contracts, to make sure that they have those sunset clauses in the development agreements, because our standards change so much, for example around the Summer Gardens and so on that it was possible to make a development agreement if we just sort of lie dormant for years and years until it becomes financially viable, and standards have changed, social standards, the belief in the significance. Anyway, thank you very much, again. Keep it up.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein.

MR. EPSTEIN: There has been a little discussion about the Summer Street buildings, the Summer Gardens. It was known at one point as the Brenhold lands, I gather that was the company that owned the lands before they were developed the way they are now. What facilitated the development was Policy 6.8 under the Municipal Planning Strategy in HRM. I'm not sure if that policy is replicated in other municipalities around Nova Scotia - I'm not sure - but it has certainly been a focus of a lot of debate in HRM.

What that policy does is it says that if you own land on which there is a designated heritage property, you can come along to the municipality and negotiate for a development agreement. A development agreement allows the owner to build beyond the normal confines of the zoning bylaw, the typical confine that would be problematic would be height. In exchange for municipal permission to do this, the theory is that the owner will give additional protections to the heritage building, that is additional beyond what the designation itself would require.

So that's what we actually saw at work with respect to the Brenhold lands and the Summer Gardens, and that's why there's the building in front, which was the designated heritage building, and now in behind, two 12-storey buildings that have gone up. Indeed, because lot consolidation is a possibility, the heritage designation seems to expand to the whole of the larger property, when you get a lot consolidation that might include a designated heritage property. So that's also what we saw.

I know your organization was involved in the lengthy litigation about that particular development, and there certainly are problems, that you referred to in passing, with how protection of the designated building was interpreted in that case. But, I'm wondering whether Policy 6.8, upon your reflection, remains a good tool, or whether it's a problematic tool. Is it one where the problems, if any, are at the council level when they make a political

decision about what they're going to do, or does the policy itself represent something problematic, or is it still a virtue?

MR. PARISH: My recollection over the past few years is that we've run into more problems with Policy 6.8. It has been more harmful than it has been beneficial to us. Developers are using that as an opportunity to put bigger projects on the property than they would be allowed, and it really doesn't do anything for the heritage property. Now, I think that the motivation to that section was a good one, trying to save heritage properties. Myself, I think that the difficulties lie with staff. I don't think it's necessarily the council.

What happens is that under Policy 6.8, you have to go by way of a development agreement. What happens is that the staff meets with the developer, and they hammer out the development agreement. That's a negotiation that goes on, essentially, behind closed doors, and out pops this development agreement that's then put before council, usually to accept or deny it. My observation over the past number of years, with respect to the various development agreements in the downtown where it's all development agreements or heritage properties under Policy 6.8, is that the city staff doesn't deal strongly enough with these developers. They just don't, in my mind, serve the community well in the deals that they're making and bringing forward to the politicians. I think that's the problem. If you had a stronger staff that could control that negotiation, then Policy 6.8 might work better.

MR. EPSTEIN: Interesting comment, thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. DeWolfe.

MR. DEWOLFE: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming. There are two things, really. Is there an age for a home to be considered a heritage home or building? With antique cars, I think it's 30 years. Is it 100 years for a property?

MR. PARISH: Is it 50 years?

MR. DUFFUS: Generally, it's considered that 50 years is a starting point. It's moving.

MR. DEWOLFE: I know there are some unique building designs from years gone by and so on, but I'm thinking of a couple of buildings in Stellarton that are original buildings for the original Foord Pit, which would be right on Bridge Avenue, because that's where the Foord Seam outcropped. I worked in mining all my life. There are a couple of buildings that show up on an original Foord Pit map that were there before New Glasgow, before Stellarton, original buildings. One was the mine office, and the other one was a mine store. They're still there, but they look like essentially nothing, they're just old houses that have been stuccoed on the outside. They go back to the very beginning of the roots in Pictou

County, because those roots go back to the original Foord Pit. Could they be considered heritage properties?

MR. PARISH: Of course they could. Maybe there's a job that you've got to do in that community to . . .

MR. DEWOLFE: Well, that's what I'm thinking. Maybe that's something that could be looked at, at some point. (Interruptions) Well, the Cornish Pumphouse is another little project over on the site, the other end, down where . . .

MR. DUFFUS: It was relocated because of the twinning of the highway.

MR. DEWOLFE: That's right.

MR. DUFFUS: But it was also designed to be restored, and was never funded.

MR. DEWOLFE: This goes back beyond that, too, these buildings. It's kind of unique, I think. In fact when they built the Department of Mines building on Bridge Avenue back in 1954, I'm sad to say I remember the construction phase. I was a little boy, but my uncle happened to be MLA for the area at the time, and I used to travel around with him. He got stuck looking after me quite a few times.

[10:30 a.m.]

At any rate, when they were building that building, I found out in later years, of course, the original Foord Pit had caved in under the building when they were doing the construction. They had to haul fill for days to fill it in. We often wondered, when they would rumble in that shop with bulldozers, is it going to give out again, but it held up all through my time anyway, my years in the building. Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.

MS. WHALEN: No list yet, or I'm first? I wanted to ask a little bit about the heritage strategy that's going on right now. A couple of weeks ago we had Bill Greenlaw in to talk about cultural issues in general, and we touched a bit on this heritage strategy. I would like to know if you've had an opportunity to see the interim report or to talk to the Voluntary Planning group that's doing that right now, that's creating it.

MR. PARISH: I spent a couple of hours with the Voluntary Planning people. I wasn't aware that there's an interim report out. Is there?

MS. WHALEN: It's expected in April, but we were told that they would be going back to stakeholders to talk to them prior to the interim report coming out.

MR. PARISH: I haven't heard from them.

MS. WHALEN: So we wondered if there had been some consultation back. Well, I'm not sure if that report is on schedule, but it was to be in early April. So we were hoping that you would be talking to them, because I think your contribution will be very important to the way it goes. I guess my question for you would be, what are your expectations from that? Do you have some things you're looking for that we should be looking for? As I say, you've made a presentation, I'm sure that would be public, what you had asked them to do.

MR. PARISH: The presentation I made to them is very similar to the presentation I just made here.

MS. WHALEN: Okay. No secrets.

MR. PARISH: I'm hopeful that it will be a mechanism to get us where we want to go in the heritage community. I'm hopeful that they will come out with a report that will give the politicians the courage to move forward on this issue.

MS. WHALEN: I guess you're aware of the response from the off-highway vehicle report which came from Voluntary Planning. In that case many of the recommendations did not come forward. They were either watered down or neglected. So I'm hoping, as well, that it will be much better as we look at heritage. I agreed with you when you began by saying this is such an important asset for us, not only for tourism but for our own local economies. We've talked about the employment that can come from it, as well as the sense of pride. I think there are a lot of reasons to do that.

One of my concerns with the heritage strategy, and perhaps it should be something to celebrate, was that it had a hugely broad mandate. It went right into languages, it went into wilderness, it touched on so many aspects. Mr. Greenlaw said that should be a good thing. But I'm wondering that with so many things on their plate if something like our built heritage, which is so important in the places we live, might be somehow lost in the shuffle, or is there a concern in your view that that might be?

MR. PARISH: Well, I will confess that when I read the parameters of the Voluntary Planning review, I was uncertain as to exactly where they were going or what their mandate was. I did speak to Maureen Reid, the chairman, about it to get what direction I could. I agree with you, it was very broad, and all I can say is that we appeared and made our pitch, and hopefully something will come out the other end that we're happy with.

MS. WHALEN: So you're like the rest of us, just waiting to see. Then we can comment when we see it. That makes sense. Earlier on you talked about other jurisdictions having a separate committee, people with expertise, who could somehow replace the current

system we have. I'm wondering if you could just give us a little bit more, maybe just enlarge on that idea so that I understand it better.

MR. PARISH: I have two places in mind. New York City is one, and Tony Tung spoke about that last year at the Carmichael Lecture, how there are two architects and an engineer and a planner and all these people. I think Tony Tung himself was on that committee for a number of years, which is where he got his expertise to then write his books and come to speak to us. This committee, the way he explained it, had power, they had strength, and the reason that New York still has a vast array of its heritage buildings is because of the strength of this committee.

The other place that I'm aware of is in New Zealand, where, again, they have a committee that is made up of architects and planners and engineers and perhaps even developers, who are the people who make the decisions about heritage properties rather than the politicians.

MS. WHALEN: In our own case here in Nova Scotia, would you see that replacing just the municipal properties, or is there a way that they could work and combine both municipally- and provincially-registered properties?

MR. PARISH: Before I answer that, this system that we're proposing, to me, sounds like a good idea, but it would only work if you people here did your job. A committee like that is only as good as the people you put on it. It was interesting for me this morning to watch what you do, and I was pleased to see that you really do take care of these appointments. If you did have a good committee that would do this work, I think that would be a very good idea, so long as you had the right people. That's why you need to have people with credentials, and you need to have guidelines as to who is going to be on the committee.

That's not to say that politicians couldn't do a good job. It would be preferable to us for municipal councils or the Cabinet to be making decisions on heritage properties than it would be to just have a one-year delay like we have now. The point is it needs to go to some external body that could consider all the issues and make a decision on some appropriate guidelines, as to what should happen to this building.

MS. WHALEN: That was a good answer, thank you. It explains it well. I also wanted to go back to your issue about non-owners making an application to register buildings. I guess in my own mind I'm thinking of some of the objections people would have to that, it's not hard to go there, but I'm wondering what the rule is in other provinces or other jurisdictions. Is this an accepted practice elsewhere, so that we could go back to it and say that other places have done this and it works?

MR. PARISH: I don't know the answer to that. I would like to echo Graeme's words, I think he put it very well, people have an idea now that you buy a building and you've paid

money for it so you can do what you want with it. Well, I don't know how long you've lived in any particular house, but when I go back over my life I think on average maybe 10 years I've lived in a house and then I moved, maybe to change cities or the family's getting bigger or smaller, all those reasons. So you have a house that's 150 years old, or whatever, people buy it, and they're going to be there on average 10 years, well, I agree with Graeme, you're basically a custodian for that heritage building, if it's a designated building, and you should leave it for the generations that follow you. These aren't all buildings, these are just the special buildings.

I think you have to get over the hurdle of saying, well, I bought it, it's my property, I can do with it what I want. You have to get over that psychological hurdle and you have to accept the fact that for these special buildings you're a custodian. When you get over that hurdle, then you can move forward.

MS. WHALEN: I agree. On the funds side, you talked about funding being a big issue, not for your organization but for the owners of these properties, whether it's something that would be incentives to help people cover the costs and the additional expense that goes with being owners. I'm wondering, is there any model about how a fund could be created, either levies for other development or something like that that might provide funds in a pool that could then be used by municipalities or provincially to help those who have these expenses that are incurred?

MR. DUFFUS: One of the things that we talked about 10 years ago when I was on Heritage Advisory for Halifax was the possibility of setting up an organization or utilizing the one we had, which was the Halifax Foundation. At the time it wasn't particularly functional, but it has gotten better with the appointment of new blood. They have taken on some projects for specific events. The model we were looking at was something like the Rhodes Scholarship and the Nobel Prize. Those were funded by a benefactor who put money into it for a specific reason. The prizes are paid for by the income from those investments in those enterprises.

If the federal government or the provincial government were to set this up and put a large sum of money into a fund and use the income from that to support heritage, it could be very effective. There's a need to organize it. You would have to have a body appointed to review applications and apportion the money.

MS. WHALEN: So that's one thing that actually . . .

MR. DUFFUS: But that's a long-term solution, because people could be encouraged to donate to this in their wills, and it could build up over time.

MS. WHALEN: There is no fund like that at the moment, is there?

MR. PARISH: Well, in Ontario, my understanding is that the heritage movement is fairly well funded there from their Trillium fund. The Trillium fund, as I understand it, is money that the Ontario Government puts aside from the casino earnings, and that money is to go to culture and other special provisions in the province. That money is used to fund heritage groups. Now whether it goes to actual individual homeowners for repairing their houses, I don't know that for certain. As far as I know, here - you people would know better than I do - our provincial revenues from the casinos go into general revenues. It seems to me that's the kind of idea, that that money should be earmarked for something like heritage buildings.

I know that in England, in Britain, the National Trust, that most of you will have heard about, has a number of old buildings and does wonderful things. They're funded by their gambling casino money in Britain as well. So other jurisdictions have used that money to make this funding come forward.

MR. DUFFUS: There is actually an architect who graduated from the Conservation Program they had for a very short period of time at the School of Architecture who was unable to get a job here in Nova Scotia. He was very qualified, very interested. He went to Nebraska. You wouldn't think of Nebraska as being a place where heritage conservation was a big issue, but all the money from their gambling proceeds goes to support the preservation and maintenance of their built heritage. I understand he's doing extremely well, and he's now president of a company doing restorations of buildings. The fact that there's money there, the industry has been growing in leaps and bounds in that state. That's what he tells me.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parish or Mr. Duffus, any comments you would like to make?

MR. PARISH: We appreciate very much the length of time you've given us, and appreciate very much the questions, and thanks again for inviting us here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We certainly want to thank you for coming and sharing the information with us this morning. Your passion is evident in this project, and your concern with directions, I'm acutely familiar with the particulars of the Special Places Protection Act Mr. Duffus mentioned. We've talked about that on numerous occasions. I think your challenge to us is several-fold, in terms of the legislation. I guess I was quite taken aback with the amount of time it takes something to move through the heritage regulations, the deregistration process. That seems to me to be an inordinately long period of time. You people are working with it. So thank you very much for coming this morning and sharing this information. It was very insightful.

The committee will just take a few minutes' break while our witnesses leave, and then we'll come back to talk about what our future work will be.

[10:42 a.m. The committee recessed.]

[10:45 a.m. The committee reconvened.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Let's come back to the question of agenda setting. There was a list that had been provided to you, from back some years ago, of people that the committee of the day had indicated they wanted to have in. I see, in the last discussions we had, the Mainland Building Trades and Construction Council was identified, and that one is coming for the next meeting. Committee, what are your thoughts on future witnesses?

MR. EPSTEIN: I think we can work off the list that we generated before. I'd like to suggest we look seriously at calling Department of Education officials to talk about student learning assessments. It's part of our mandate, and it's certainly topical. We've heard from AIMS, their concerns about the performance of our schools. We've heard criticisms in response to what AIMS had to say. It's something that's always of concern to parents and students alike. I would regard that as perhaps an item that might be appropriate to follow up with.

MS. RAYMOND: I don't know if you do this, but do you pair your witnesses, ever? You have the NSTU talking about standardized testing as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I suppose the thought was I don't think it would be the same session. If indeed you felt that you were going to get more of the information you wanted from one to the other, then we would go to your highest priority. It has been suggested that we go to the Department of Education for student learning assessment. If we agree on that, then perhaps the standardized testing might come a little later in the program.

One I noticed with some interest here, and I haven't heard for some period of time, is the BLAC Report on Education. I know the government has had that report for some period of time. I know some actions have been taken. I just simply don't know what the status is, and that's certainly one I think is of concern to everybody. So we'll put that one down for number two. Are there any others?

MS. WHALEN: I think they're all good subjects that are here. I'd like to hear about the lighthouse divestiture, and I think it does tie in. We've heard from the bureaucrats today from the Heritage Trust, and I think it's a similar issue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You want to know how much oil is on each site, do you? (Interruptions)

MS. WHALEN: Well, we might have to look at that while we're there, but again they're a symbol of our province as none other.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we'll put that down for three. Any other suggestions?

MR. EPSTEIN: Oh, I missed that. I'm sorry.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The third one was the lighthouse divestiture that was suggested we put down. I have now marked that down as number three.

MR. HINES: That would be number four actually, because we have one . . .

MS. WHALEN: If I could, Mr. Chairman, I think there's an organization, they've said deputy minister under that, but there is an organization and I believe they've been to all three caucuses to talk about . . .

MS. RAYMOND: Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society.

MS. WHALEN: I think that's it. I don't know if we could combine them, but I think that might be important. From the divestiture side, if it's the bureaucratic side we hear from, it will be the value of the properties and, as you say, the cleanup cost, but I think it might be important to balance with the preservation, the asset and what's being done to preserve it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Might I suggest to you that it has two prongs. The first is the prong of the lighthouse divestiture people who have a specific interest in it, and the next question is where is the federal government in terms of releasing those and what's the status. Until we kind of know that, you can't zero in. So maybe the suggestion you have of marrying the two of them together, first we would deal with the federal government, where they are in terms of releasing it, and then we would go to the lighthouse preservation people.

MS. WHALEN: I would think we could do it in one day, my thought being that it's an important subject but I don't know that we want to devote two separate meetings to that. It's very important. I would like the update on both sides, so if we could increase it beyond deputy minister, that would be good.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed?

[It is agreed.]

MR. EPSTEIN: Now we have four topics. We have the Mainland Building Trades, they're coming, we have two Department of Education topics, and then the question of lighthouses. It sounds like a program for a while, to me.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I think we have a work schedule for the next several meetings. Our challenge over the next period of time is to think of some other meetings. If members have items they would like to add to the list, we can constantly keep rotating.

That being agreed, you have the list of future witnesses to take, I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

MR. HINES: So moved.

[The committee adjourned at 10:50 a.m.]