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Results: 1 - 15 of 543
Pearl Sullivan
View Pearl Sullivan Profile
Pearl Sullivan
2015-06-04 11:44
I think we all know that we cannot tell our children where to go. What we need to do is to incent our young people to stay home.
I think that critical ecosystems which are highly differentiated are very important because of the geography of this country. In my view we have a system, and in engineering we have three levels of huge engagement: the major companies, the small and medium-sized businesses, and the start-up community.
The start-up community should look to and work with all of IBM, Toyota, GM, and Magna equally to be part of this non-linear process, because for the deployment of disruptive technology, first you have to develop it and then deploy it. There is a chain of events that's highly non-linear and very complex.
If we put them all in the same ecosystem, they learn from each other and they can have a common platform to build off each other, and they complement each other. The new products and services will come from the complementary connection.
View Dennis Bevington Profile
NDP (NT)
I'm sure you're familiar, right across the world, with different kinds of programs. Do you have any advice to us, if governments were to support different kinds of energy efficiency programs for commercial enterprises?
I know commercial enterprises are sometimes the lost child when it comes to energy efficiency. Would it be tax relief? Would it be straight up incentives? How would you say that the commercial businesses would most likely respond?
Mike Morrice
View Mike Morrice Profile
Mike Morrice
2015-06-04 9:19
The commercial businesses would respond very well, of course.
I would encourage you to look no farther than within our own borders. Provincially, we have a number of programs, in B.C., in Ontario, and in Quebec, for example, that would be wonderful models for the federal government to look at, to build on, and to provide more incentives that would be a real diversity and a mix. If you look at what you provide as a federal government on commercialization through NRC, for example, through SR and ED credits, all of those similar models would apply so well here. My sense is that the research would be very much within the bounds of what others have already done.
Thank you for the question
View Lawrence Toet Profile
CPC (MB)
I find it very interesting.
I know in my previous life in business, we were very often—in fact, almost inevitably— ahead of the curve even on regulatory issues. I think of things like silver recovery from the film work that we did. When they came to us and said here are the new regulations on silver recovery, we told them we had been doing that for over 10 years already and that those were things we do. With vegetable-based inks, they said we had to get away from petroleum-based inks. We hadn't been using petroleum-based inks for 10 years already. This was a constant ongoing thing. Also incentives, like you say, and then going forward and changing lighting within our facility, there was a return on investment on that very quickly, even without a government incentive. My sense is that a lot of companies, and especially the privately held companies, are looking at a broader perspective also for the greater good of their communities.
In that light, are you finding that companies are going through this process with a view for themselves, for their own personal private company? Are you also seeing them getting much more engaged in the environmental aspects of their community and the sustainability of their community, and becoming actively involved in that through themselves and through their employees?
Mike Morrice
View Mike Morrice Profile
Mike Morrice
2015-06-04 9:28
There is absolutely a trickle-down effect, where we see employees of regional carbon initiative members who are then participants in different programs of the GRCA, for example. They may then also volunteer with one of the many environmental groups in their community, so it is another channel through which we can connect with Canadians and speak to their connection with nature and to their own interest in the environmental performance and record of our country. Absolutely, engaging through an employer is a critical way to speak to Canadians.
View Judy A. Sgro Profile
Lib. (ON)
The story that you told us earlier and the kinds of changes that he was able to make to his small company so very quickly are the kinds of things that need to be translated off to many others because many small things can make a huge difference.
One of things in Ontario in particular that might be driving some of this need for alternative sources is the issue of the cost of water, hydro, and so on. Certainly from a business perspective, I would think that they would be very open to being triggered with ideas and opportunities. Some of these partners that you have I would imagine are reaching out to some of the larger corporations. The smaller ones should be an easier turnaround, but some of our major companies must be already taking significant steps to reduce their resource use, are they not?
Mike Morrice
View Mike Morrice Profile
Mike Morrice
2015-06-04 9:36
Absolutely, yes.
Many of the larger firms we work with have dedicated staff. Sun Life Financial has a director of sustainability, for example. Those are the kinds of people we want to have at the front of the room to be sharing the successes that companies like Sun Life and the City of Kitchener have had so that other businesses follow suit faster and have similar success.
Then to your earlier question, they can then take on projects that go well beyond a payback period of two years or less because they've created a revolving fund where savings are reinvested back into projects that can be more ambitious and then in turn inspire others to follow suit. This is very much about creating a community of support so that the stories like VeriForm and Paul Rak are not a one-off but become the norm. In turn we can challenge Paul. In his first two years he did the really easy stuff, and as a result of being part of the network, he's now gone above and beyond. As I said it's now at the 80% reduction level and at the same time he doubled his profit.
Networks like this can spur on those who are already ahead of the curve and bring in a larger tent of unlikely players, whether it's the mall or the hospital, the manufacturer or the utility. There's a business interest for them, there's a values-based interest for them, and ultimately there's a strong interest in growing the low-carbon economy, which is growing faster than the rest of the economy as a whole.
View Megan Leslie Profile
NDP (NS)
View Megan Leslie Profile
2015-06-04 9:50
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to both of you. This has been very interesting. I appreciate your testimony.
Mr. Morrice, I'd like to start with you. You and I have chatted about energy efficiency in the past, and I think I might have mentioned that I was part of the working group that established Efficiency Nova Scotia, which is an arm's-length energy efficiency utility. It's not a not-for-profit. It's not a government agency. It's actually a utility, like a power company, only they reduce the power we're using.
When I was doing that, my role was with the Affordable Energy Coalition. I was there on behalf of low-income Nova Scotians. If you are on welfare in Nova Scotia, you live on about six dollars a day, so if the choice is a $6 CFL light bulb—where you'll save the money eventually—or eating that day, the choice is clear. You're going to eat. With low-income folks there are very particular barriers, but with companies, it's different. There aren't really the same barriers, yet still they're not doing energy efficiency. Ms. Ambler asked if these companies were going to keep doing this. That's valid.
You talked about how they get the taste for it and then off they go. My question to you is: why haven't they done it already? Why do they actually need you? What role do you serve? If it affects the bottom line, why aren't these businesses already knee-deep or neck-deep in energy efficiency?
Mike Morrice
View Mike Morrice Profile
Mike Morrice
2015-06-04 9:52
Great question.
There are a myriad of answers to that. The first is having examples to look to and seeing success—and not in a report of a company in some other country, but a peer. It's seeing other peers take a leadership role, which relates back to the question about municipalities. An excellent example of that is where a municipality can be the first to lead and a business can learn from a municipality, so the first one is providing examples.
The second is the connections and networks. In Ontario, for example, there's the save ON energy program, which has some similarities, I understand, with Nova Scotia.... Many businesses might not be aware or could be overwhelmed by the bureaucracy that they perceive to be in place. To host a technical workshop where their conservation demand management person is at the front of the room, who can then walk them through it afterwards, is another removal of a barrier.
Then the third is having a friendly coach or guide to make it easier for you to remove any perceived risks.
Those are all the various barriers that a network of support is designed to reduce to uplift those who are already in the front lines, and then bring others alongside.
View Colin Carrie Profile
CPC (ON)
View Colin Carrie Profile
2015-06-04 10:07
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to address Mr. Morrice first. As the MP for Oshawa I'm happy that you brought up Durham Sustain Ability and their partnerships with Deer Creek, Durham College, and General Motors. I think this is something that our community benefits from but I think more communities could benefit from those types of arrangements as well.
I believe you mentioned a company called VeriForm. They doubled their profits by investing in green technology: energy efficiency, recycling, and stuff like that. Did the profits come from savings in energy alone or are there other ways that the profits were increased?
Mike Morrice
View Mike Morrice Profile
Mike Morrice
2015-06-04 10:08
The vast majority of the savings were through operational costs of reduced energy usage. I would be pleased to send you a link to provide a full list of the 37 projects I first cited and the specific.... Paul, if he were here, would share about reduced maintenance costs, would get into operational costs. I would defer to Paul.
View David McGuinty Profile
Lib. (ON)
I agree.
That's why, for example, $30 million on these billboards would pay for one million bus passes for seniors on pensions. I would think that would really raise the profile of the need for infrastructure and the fact that governments are working together. The $30 million would pay for the salaries of 500 registered nurses for one year. I think that would help identify the need for us to cooperate on health care. There are a lot of alternative uses for these very scarce taxpayer dollars.
My second question is for you, Ms. Ballem, and it is on deploying private capital.
I know your administration is giving some thought on how to best dislodge a lot of private sector money, whether it's sovereign wealth funds, or whether it's the $600 billion sloshing around in Canadian corporate bank accounts right now—largely from corporate tax cuts—that has not been deployed. The disappointing fact in corporate Canada is that we're not seeing the deployment of that the way we thought we might.
I wonder if you can help us to understand your view. You are a major Canadian leader in sustainability in Vancouver. You know the infrastructure needs. I had the privilege of writing the original first cities deal, with Mike Harcourt, when I drafted it and produced it for Paul Martin, then the minister of finance. Vancouver has always been at the forefront.
What's your thinking in terms of how we can best use federal mechanisms, fiscal or otherwise, to get a hold of some of this private capital and deploy it properly for infrastructure needs?
Penny Ballem
View Penny Ballem Profile
Penny Ballem
2015-06-02 16:10
Well, I think since I've been in a senior level of public service, obviously the use of public-private partnerships is something Canada has done a lot of work on, and British Columbia was a leader in that way.
I came from the health sector, and as deputy of health was responsible for building the first public-private partnership hospital in British Columbia, the Abbotsford Regional Hospital, a long-awaited facility. Obviously, that is a way of leveraging private capital. At the city level, to undertake a P3 that's the size of a hospital....
We have a lot of infrastructure. My city engineer here is responsible for a significant percentage of what is anywhere from a $250 million to $300 million capital spend on an annual basis in the city of Vancouver. We're learning how to leverage private capital in different ways, at a smaller scale, as well as the big projects such as this proposal we've put on the table today, the Broadway line. Certainly a lot of the transit infrastructure that has been built in metro Vancouver has been through P3 arrangements—not all of it. Whether or not that would work for the Broadway extension really depends on the criteria. So I think that's a major way....
We have a lot of different initiatives under way right now. We're leveraging private capital through partnerships that are not as formal as a traditional P3 but cause us to end up in the same place.
We know that pension funds are interested in housing now. They're moving out of some of their more traditional real estate holdings, and they're very interested in market residential housing and seniors housing. Housing is a huge priority, as you know, for Vancouver, and we're looking at those sorts of opportunities.
They're complex, and I think one of the most important things for our senior levels of government to understand is that there are no free goods out there. If you leverage private capital, it still has to be paid for; financing costs have to come with it. It's understanding what a deal looks like, what the impact will be over the long term, and how a local government that doesn't have the same fiscal capacity as a senior level of government is going to manage that long-term relationship.
I think that's a learning point for municipalities across the country. There is a lot of great work being done, and some really remarkable partnerships, some of which are long-standing. We're building our capacity in that area.
View Ron Cannan Profile
CPC (BC)
It's regarding corporate social responsibility. While you've been a free enterprise with a social conscience, do you find that within the government or within the private sector there's more of a movement in that direction as well?
Bruce MacDonald
View Bruce MacDonald Profile
Bruce MacDonald
2015-05-26 9:47
We're seeing more and more companies understand that their consumers are demanding that they be good corporate citizens.
Results: 1 - 15 of 543 | Page: 1 of 37

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