Tour with Naomi Yamamoto, Minister of State for Building Code Renewal

Here is a quick summary of the meeting with John Horgan, Naomi Yamamoto and her assistant Raechelle Williams. Jeff Vasey, Executive Director, Building Standards was unable to attend as he was ill.

new ministry just created, lots to learn and set up.
Likely not too many big changes will happen until the new Liberal leadership is sorted out.
Laying groundwork for future changes once the political scene gets established
Very impressed that both John (NDP) and Naomi (Liberal) were so willing to work together for common goals leaving any politicking behind. See attached photo.
We discussed how useful Alternative Solutions could be now and in the future ESPECIALLY with a less prescriptive code. Education of all involved parties is critical. All seemed to agree that moving towards more sustainable building practices does involve less prescriptive codes. We briefly discussed ASRi. (Alternative Solutions Resource Initiative)
We emphasized that a truly sustainable building is customized to the site to maximize system integration with the available features of the site…like a living building.
We also emphasized the benefits of passive solar as the most cost effective way to build greener.
We discussed the critical need to allow some innovation. Discussed the Living Building Challenge and that Clark County is allowing 5 special permits (projects) per year for LBC innovation. We discussed how this could be a very useful way to advance green building policy here in BC.
We put in their hands a number of items.
- Info sheet on our home
- Policy/barriers report written by Ann for Cascadia as part of the full case study to be completed on Eco-Sense paid for by the Vancity grant
- The BCSEA report “Ten Barriers to small scale Renewable Energy Systems” http://www.bcsea.org/solutions/government/policy/ten-barriers-to-small-scale-renewable-energy
- All the current graphs from our energy monitoring and mass wall performance data
- David Eisenberg’s card (shared info on DCAT)
- Building cards for local green building professionals (engineers, designers, builders, etc)
Both Raechelle and Naomi seemed very friendly, personable, and they seemed very much to enjoy their tour.