Government Operations Committee on March 20th, 2007

[Mary Chaput]

I'm not sure I can bring it down to four walls and a phone, but we'll certainly do our level best.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

You know what I'm looking for.

[Mary Chaput]

I think I know what you're looking for, yes.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

If the chair allows it, you can take the rest of my time if you want.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

If you'd like to, please do, Mr. Turner.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It's a great pleasure to be part of this fine committee. I want to thank you all very much for having me.

I understand that there's not really a database of all the buildings. That was in our briefing notes. Do you have a list of addresses? We must have a catalogue of all these places.

[Mary Chaput]

Certainly there is a database.

[Shirley Jen]

I'll take this question.

In the DFRP, the directory of federal real property, we have all the properties, with the addresses and locations. We gave you the website. It's in your deck, at the very last—

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

We can access that?

[Shirley Jen]

Yes, you can access that.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Great. That's all.

Mrs. Nash questioned you a bit about the state of the buildings. In general, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being perfect and 10 being a wreck, where does our portfolio fall in that sort of scale, in general?

[Mary Chaput]

I should preface my comments by saying I'm an Ottawa girl. Therefore, my answer to this would be very misleading, because it would be based on what I see here in Ottawa, which is not necessarily representative. In particular, I wouldn't have a sense for you at all, sir, in terms of what special purpose space, military bases, laboratories—

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Let's talk about marquee buildings. Let's talk about your post offices and DND office buildings and stuff in Ottawa and the things that we see beside Union Station in Toronto--marquee buildings across the country. In general, what shape are they in?

[Mary Chaput]

It would be pure speculation on my part.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Is there anyone who can go past pure speculation to give us that idea?

[Mary Chaput]

I would expect that the Department of Public Works could give you an answer to that as it relates to the portion of the portfolio that they hold.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Okay, then maybe, Chair, we might think about seeing if we can get that kind of information. It would be great.

Do your marquee buildings, and does this portfolio, in your estimation, constitute what one would call a national treasure?

[Mary Chaput]

Certainly elements of the portfolio do. I would call the Parliament Buildings iconic. I think there are other buildings, heritage properties, that are particularly important to Canadian identity and heritage. I would also say that--and this is just one man's view--I think there is value in the dispersion of buildings across Canada, things like post offices and RCMP detachments, in terms of establishing the federal presence and connecting Canadians.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

All right, so I guess the answer is yes.

Quickly because we have only two minutes, are we squandering this national treasure by letting it deteriorate? If we have $4 billion in further repairs here, and we're sitting on buildings that.... Let me ask you this: if we sold this portfolio, could we ever recreate it?

[Mary Chaput]

Over time you certainly could, I would expect, with a certain number of dollars. But I couldn't tell you what those would be.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It would take about $26 billion.

[Mary Chaput]

It would probably be much more.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It would take $26 billion to recreate what we already own.

[Mary Chaput]

It would be much more than $26 billion, sir.

[Garth Turner, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It would be much more than $26 billion?