 Good morning and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind media on the phone, you may press star one at any time in order to ask a question. That's star one at any time to enter the queue. The question and answer portion will take place after today's remarks. I will now invite minister George Heyman to speak. Please go ahead. Good morning everyone and welcome. It's great to be joining you today from the traditional territories of the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Slewa Tooth Peoples and we're here to announce another step in our joint efforts to address the climate crisis and build a better future, a future everyone wants. Today's announcement is going to show what we can accomplish by working with all levels of government to support people and communities right across British Columbia. This is an important part of our Clean BC Roadmap to 2030 Action Plan to meet our targets, to reduce emissions and deal with the climate crisis. And with that, I'd like to invite the federal minister of natural resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, to provide some remarks. Good morning and thank you to minister Heyman for the introduction. Je vous jouais aujourd'hui de notre Vancouver située sur la territoire ancestral des nations Musqueam, Squamish and Slewa Tooth. It is a pleasure to be among you today on behalf of the Honorable Dominique Leblanc, minister of intergovernmental affairs infrastructure in communities and certainly pleased to join minister Heyman and Kamloops councillor Singh for the announcement of the third intake of the Clean BC Communities Fund. Climate change, as I think everybody knows, represents an existential threat to our way of life here in Canada and the people around the globe. It is no longer something that is far away. Climate change is causing significant impacts today and these impacts will increase significantly going forward in the absence of aggressive near-term action to reduce carbon emissions. British Columbians, British Columbians know more than most that there is no time to waste. It is just this past year that we have witnessed extreme heat and catastrophic fires, atmospheric rivers, floods and slides and with these came human and economic devastation. Climate change, though, often also represents an enormous economic opportunity for those countries that act thoughtfully and aggressively to seize those opportunities that will be enabled by the transition to a low carbon future. Canada and British Columbia have taken bold action to address the climate crisis over the past several years. For Canada's part, the actions we plan to take were outlined in some significant detail in Canada's strength and climate plan, a healthy environment and a healthy economy and certainly we have been very pleased to partner with the government of British Columbia who has a similarly ambitious climate plan. Our bold and thoughtful actions were acknowledged just last week by the International Energy Agency which stated that our climate change policies have been exemplary in nature. However, we are all aware that more must be done and that climate action will need to remain a priority for governments at every level over the course of coming decades. Certainly an important part of climate action must involve our governments working together and working with municipalities, Indigenous communities, non-profit organizations and businesses to build resilient energy efficient communities. So today I am very pleased to announce a combined federal provincial investment of up to $134 million for local green projects that manage renewable energy, increase access to clean energy and improve energy efficiency in buildings, transportation and other infrastructure. This will be the third intake of the Clean BC Clean Communities Fund. To date, the federal government and the province of BC have funded over $240 million for local green infrastructure projects through the Clean BC Communities Fund. The success of the first two intakes underlined the value of this program in addressing climate change through adaptation and innovation. Some example projects would include the biomass energy center in the district of Sycamus which reduces its carbon footprint through new bio-heat technology and sets a precedent for eco-conscious rural infrastructure. And the new passive house certified hub of tourism and economic development building in Castlegar which is a leading standard for low energy efficient buildings through its use of passive influences like sunshine, shading, ventilation and airtight design. These types of projects help us to reduce emissions and enhance resilience all the while creating jobs and economic opportunities here in British Columbia. Beginning a week from Wednesday, the third intake of Clean BC's Communities Fund will open representing another step on our path towards a healthy and a prosperous low carbon economy. Thank you very much for joining us today. Let me turn this back now to Minister Haman. Thank you so much Jonathan. It's exciting to join both you and Councillor Singh in support of stronger climate action at the local level. We've seen and I know you agree with me on this local and indigenous government showing incredible leadership fighting the climate crisis and they're looking for strong partners at every level of government. So we recognize the importance of supporting these efforts. Today we're increasing our commitment with record amounts of funding through the Clean BC Communities Fund up to 134 million dollars jointly with the federal government. The science is absolutely clear that we need to rapidly move to cleaner energy in absolutely everything we do. This last year showed us just how urgent climate change is, the crisis that we're in now and we need to step up our actions. It's the reason we released the Clean BC road pretty late last year to expand and accelerate our transition to a cleaner economy for everyone with lower emissions steadily moving forward as we reduce along with Canada and the globe to keep global warming at some manageable level. Our community infrastructure is a key part of this. We've seen fantastic projects funded from the first round of the Clean BC Communities Fund and I know Councillor Singh can attest to this. The City of Kamloops funded a Canada Aquatic Centre energy efficiency upgrades that significantly improve an important community asset and help reduce climate pollution through the first intake of this program. The funds also helped finance waste heat recovery projects in places like Vancouver's False Creek and Richmond's Oval Village. A clean hydropower installation was put in place for the New Hawk Nation to get them off diesel. We've seen significant expansions of electric vehicle charging networks in Surrey, Vancouver Island, Northern BC and Coastal and Central BC. And there are others. This new funding round will open January 26 and it will help build on the incredible work of local and Indigenous governments to address the climate crisis head-on. Thank you very much and I'd now like to call on Councillor Arjun Singh from Kamloops and a member of BC's Climate Solutions Council to speak. Thank you, Minister Heyman and thank you, Minister Wilkinson. I come to you again from the City of Kamloops on the traditional ancestral and city territory of the Squepmick people. Thank you so much for this great announcement today. It's really fantastic and I would say also that I have a great opportunity through the work I do with the little governments across the province to see my colleagues and little government all across the province innovate and work really hard on exciting projects that will help reduce emissions and keep our economy and social fabric strong. And so local leaders are really excited to be partners in training climate crises and climate opportunities. And I come from a part of the province where we've had massive extreme weather impacts whether it be wildfires and floods and obviously all these things have befallen us in many ways over the last little while and we're all trying to make sure that we're leaning into the crisis and the opportunity to reduce emissions and this funding will undoubtedly help us do so. And so you know I think from the perspective of the tables that I sit at, I listen to my colleagues and the work that they want to do in their communities whether they be rural or urban in every part of the province they're ready. They're ready to work with our other orders of government partners and Minister Wilkinson and Minister Heyman and just thank you very much for this announcement. Obviously we have to work as fast as we can. We can't negotiate with the with the planet. It's starting to get mad at us. We're seeing that day in and day out in every part of the world and especially in British Columbia last little while. And so this this funding will help I think us enormously and we need more. We always need more of that and we need more partnerships to make sure we have capacity. So especially in smaller rural communities across the province the capacity issue is quite evident and this money will help and whatever we can do also to help communities. We're a willing partner I think and I know that my colleagues on the UBCM board are will be excited by this as well. I'm not along on the board but I'm a past president so it's a very exciting day for all of us and thank you again. And as Minister Heyman said in CalMOOP specifically we've benefited from this funding with a pool project. Our pool is almost 30 years old and to be able to actually retrofit it with the energy efficiency was a fantastic win for our community. And I raise my hands to our staff in CalMOOP for making that happen as well. So from a staff side, from an elected side, local government, we're ready to work with you. Thank you very much. Thank you to all our speakers today. As a reminder for reporters on the phone, please press star one to enter the queue. That's star one to ask a question. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up. Please also remember to take your phone off mute. You will not be audible until your name is called. We're now checking the phone lines for questions and it looks like we may have answered all of today's questions because we don't have any questions. So that is all we need for today so thank you to everybody for joining us and this will conclude today's event. Thank you.