Environment committee  Well, it could reduce the cost by up to 20%.

Environment committee  We didn't find any particular measure for homeowners in the United States, although there were multiple state and municipal initiatives that could be either grants or tax credits. We didn't do a complete review of what was available in the United States because that was outside the scope of this project.

Environment committee  Perhaps I could add to your previous question also. The Americans might have limited it to income-producing properties possibly as a way of capping the costs, since there is a much higher stock of historic properties in the U.S. than in Canada. They have over a million recognized historic structures in the U.S.

Environment committee  The only other federal initiative that I'm aware of is the cost-sharing program that's managed by Parks Canada, but this one is targeted for not-for-profit organizations. On the tax credit, obviously you need to have taxable income to claim it, which not-for-profit organizations usually don't.

Environment committee  As we mentioned earlier, we asked a similar question. Table 1 shows how we break down the cost of the credit between small and large projects. What would be similar to the American credit would be the large projects. Basically, we expect the large projects to be mostly income-producing properties.

Environment committee  Yes, it would be.

Environment committee  If I may, I'd like to give you an idea. Let's say the cost of the tax credit is $60 million. Since this amount represents 20% of eligible expenditures, we can assume that expenditures will be approximately $300 million. If we add a few ineligible expenses, the total amount is $350 million a year in rehabilitation expenses.

Environment committee  We were talking about the revenue generated for owners or developers, not for the government.

Environment committee  As a reference point, the take-up rate in the U.S. was close to 0.5% for income-producing properties. Depending on the years, 50% to 60% of these projects also received state credits, because multiple states also have their own credit. In that case, on top of the 20% they received at the federal level, there was also a certain percentage of tax credit at the state level.

Environment committee  It's hard to say, and there's not really enough data to come to an answer.

Environment committee  Obviously using a tax credit rather than a grant doesn't give you any control over the cost, because you have no idea what the take-up of the credit will be. Since a credit is not capped, it could be higher than what we predicted, but it's very hard to predict the take-up. The tax credit is available to anyone who has taxable income.

Environment committee  Obviously if the aim of the legislation is to provide the credit only for properties that are listed on the register, definitely the register has to be updated for everybody who owns property that's already designated as heritage, whether under provincial or municipal jurisdiction.

Environment committee  Actually, we tried to add those to the total number of properties, because as we mentioned, as of April 2017, there were 13,000 unique listings on the register, out of which approximately 6,000 or 7,000 were privately owned. For our total number of eligible properties, if we include owner-occupied residences, we arrive at a number that's close to 40,000.

Environment committee  As Jean-Denis mentioned earlier, there's not much information on this type of expense, so the best we had was a study in 2002 carried out by the State of Michigan. The study concluded that on new construction projects, 50% of the cost was materials and 50% was labour, as opposed to historic rehabilitation, where the labour part could go up to 70% of the total cost, while the materials stay at 30%.

Environment committee  We looked at everything on the register, but if you look at the summary table, you can see that we split the projects into two types, small scale and large scale. We assumed small-scale projects would be mostly for owner-occupied principal residences, while the large-scale projects would be mostly commercial and industrial buildings or large housing projects, which are the types of properties you would expect to be income-producing properties, the types of properties that would be eligible for the U.S. version of the credit.