Thank you for inviting me to speak here tonight.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the other members of Council who are able to be here tonight: Councillor Michael Wright, Councillor Glen Pollock. Also, I would like to thank Councillor Darrell Penner for doing a wonderful job emceeing tonight’s festivities. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society and the Museum Fund Sub-Committee that have worked so hard to organize and sell tickets to this event. THANK YOU.

It’s been incredible to both observe and participate in the evolution of the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society. I am not sure if you know but I was on the Heritage Society Board in 1997/98 when we worked with the City to open the Heritage Display Centre. We were pleased with the investment the City made at the time and continues to make each year to provide the Heritage Society a home. We knew at the time that the display centre was only a temporary home as we worked towards a permanent museum.

Over the many years the Heritage Society has grown into an integral stakeholder within our community. Not only through the Display Centre but as a group of dedicated volunteers who educate our school children, our community and of course City Council, about our heritage. Further, the Society has done an excellent job of elevating the debate about the importance of our built heritage and I want to applaud them for their advocacy. I and the rest of Council welcome the opportunity to continue to work with the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society.

This fundraiser tonight is the first step towards the community coming together to build a museum in Port Coquitlam. If we continue to work together we can achieve the goal of opening a museum on March 7, 2013 - the 100 year birthday of our great community. Over the years the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society had done an excellent job of storing, restoring and presenting our heritage and historical artifacts. The Society’s contributions to projects such as the Heritage Walk, the heritage kiosk, and the community archives have done much to preserve the heritage of Port Coquitlam – the heritage that is found in our stories, in heroes such as Terry Fox, in our rails and rivers, and in many other unique qualities. And now, Council is looking forward to working in cooperation with the Heritage and Cultural Society to help conserve the built heritage of our community. Jane Jacobs, author of a book published in 1961 called The Life and Death of Great American Cities, wrote "Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas MUST use old buildings."

So as we go forward and think about the emerging importance of global warming, we  must take these new ideas and figure out how we can use our old buildings. We actually have some good examples of this in our own community. For example, rather than tear down the old City Hall in 1986, the City chose to build a grand addition that honoured the historical significance and design of the original 1914 building. And when we developed the Leigh Square Community Arts Village a couple of years ago, we transformed the former post office into the Outlet building – which, incidentally, houses the community archives.

Today, we get excited about new ideas around building ‘green’, with green roofs and sustainable designs, when right in front of us we have Green Buildings!

However, we call them old buildings that take too much work and too much money to restore.  Old buildings are always deemed as being poor performers in comparison to today's new construction -- I am not sure how true this is, did we not go through the worst period of construction failure in the late 1990s with the leaky condo crisis? We need to shift the way we think -- we must see these buildings as assets. In many cases, the greenest building is one that is already built!

Just think about it. Reusing existing buildings follows the principles of reusing and recycling, and keeps demolition materials from our landfills. Did you know it is estimated that 33 percent of Canada’s total waste comes from construction and demolition?

Reusing our buildings also reduces the energy and materials needed for new construction. A study in 2007 by Prince Regeneration Trust found that rehabilitation consumes 38 times less energy than new construction. And a study in the US found that an efficient new building would have to last 65 years to equal the total energy of a demolished and partially salvaged existing building. Yet, despite all this, we continue to be challenged to grasp the importance of our built heritage. Over the past 30 years more than 20 percent of Canada's pre-1920 heritage building stock has been demolished. Even in Port Coquitlam, we haven’t been immune to this trend. Case in point -- the Lobb House and Wild Duck Inn.

To date, the Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society has done an excellent job educating and informing the City on the importance of heritage. We are listening and we’re ready to move forward. I welcome the opportunity to work with the Heritage Society to convey this information to the provincial and federal governments.

For it is those levels of government that can make the biggest impact on restoring our built heritage. As Canadians we need to demand the Federal government create a Federal Tax Incentive for Rehabilitation to encourage investment in revenue-producing heritage buildings.

We can look south of the border to see the positive effects of such a tax incentive. In 1976 the American Government started to change the tax laws to encourage reuse instead of demolition. Since then over 32,000 buildings have been saved by the private sector, in fact the private sector has invested over $36 billion dollars into restoring heritage buildings. This is five times the amount of the tax incentive! Not only does this make financial sense it also produces employment, an average of 45 jobs are created for each project.

Further, we need the provincial government to match the federal tax incentive, as many states in the US have done. The province needs to enhance the objectives of the Heritage Legacy Fund.  The federal government is starting to move in the right direction, they recently completed a pilot program. The Commercial Heritage Properties Incentive Fund provided contributions for 20% of the eligible rehabilitation costs. The results were impressive: a total of $21.5 million in federal incentives produced a private sector investment of $177.2 million and gave new life to 49 buildings. On Monday morning, I will be sending a letter to the federal Minister of Heritage and Official Languages and the provincial Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts urging them to provide financial and tax incentives to secure our built heritage.

Tonight, I am pleased to announce a new directive that will foster a new philosophy to help the City preserve our community’s heritage assets -- it is called Heritage First.

The Heritage First program has two main focuses:

• First, through the City’s Social Inclusion Committee, Councillor Wright and Councillor Pollack, along with our citizen advisors Pippa Van Velzen, Pat Dales and William Summersgill, will lead the City in developing a Heritage Strategic and Conservation Plan in 2009.
• Also, we will ensure City Council, city staff and any future developers know and understand the importance of our built heritage and look for opportunities to preserve and restore it.

Together we can make the difference. Together we can work to change the laws at the federal and provincial government. Together we can make the changes necessary at the local level. Together we can work towards the goal of opening the Port Coquitlam Museum on March 7, 2013.

Thank you.