Government Operations Committee on Feb. 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

I want to go back two steps to Mr. Martin.

Let us have a meeting the first week of March on stimulus, as early as March 3. Is that okay? We'll go back to the stimulus package and refocus on it. Okay, that's done.

Now, Mr. Warkentin raises two issues. I think we can run in tandem the issues of greening of the federal real estate and sale-leaseback as a financing mechanism for greening or updating or retrofitting. It seems to me they're pretty close. At the same meeting, there's no reason we can't deal with the current policy on disposal of unneeded real estate assets. I think that's what you were getting at.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I wouldn't necessarily say unneeded. It would just be generally a commitment to sell assets that would likely be predominantly real estate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Okay, then we're moving out of real estate.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

We actually don't know what those assets are yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Generally, you don't sell the real estate unless you need it, unless it's a sale-leaseback. However, if you're talking about other assets now, we've expanded the envelope into other assets. So if you want to study other assets as well as real estate, you can. You can suggest it.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I think that is what I suggested, and Mr. Chair, it relates specifically to the government's commitment to a sale of assets to realize $10 billion over the course of five years. So I think it's incumbent on this committee to investigate what those assets are, what review is being done to determine what those assets are, valuation, etc. My suspicion is that most of those assets will be real estate, simply given the values involved, but they may or may not include other assets. Part of the problem is we don't know what those assets are yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Public Works is the ministry that handles most of this, but other ministries do manage real estate as well--for example, Transport--so I'm going to suggest that we have a meeting on that, and that may cover off some of the questions you have, but it won't necessarily cover off other assets.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

But we won't know that until we actually have a chance to investigate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

That's right.

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

May I step in here? I appreciate the questions you're asking.

I don't speak on behalf of the minister. I don't speak on behalf of anybody other than myself. My sense or my suspicion is that not all the real estate being considered has even been identified, first of all. Second, I would suggest that it isn't just real estate, and I would imagine that it's not just Public Works, so I would suggest that it's an important meeting to have, and I think we absolutely should be made aware of anything and everything that's being considered. Canadians deserve to know about it. But I would suggest that maybe this is a meeting that we have to wait some time for. Certainly we can get initial responses from the relevant ministers and ministries, but I'm just not sure that we'll get a whole lot of clarity in the coming weeks or months. We may be able to get an answer that satisfies us, and it may not take, by any stretch, a meeting. It would simply be that the review is being undertaken, and they might be able to tell us what departments those assets fall under. That might be all we would get for some time.

If we want to do a larger study, if we want to bring in people from the private sector, that might be a study we would want to look at--the question of whether government should ever sell anything--but we did a significant study in the last Parliament regarding sale-leaseback, and we found some very interesting things. I'm just not sure we'll get the answers in the short term that you are looking for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Ms. Hall Findlay.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I would actually insist on a meeting fairly soon, at the very least to determine that there are no answers. It is the government that has committed to the sale of assets. We don't know what they are. Again, my assumption is that a predominant portion of that would be real estate simply because of evaluations, but you can't not know for several months what the assets are if in fact you're planning to book a net increase of their value of $2 billion. That's a lot of money, and it has to be the net.

So I would strongly ask that we have a meeting fairly soon, at the very least to determine what progress has been made in identifying those assets.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

The sales envisaged are about spending reductions, which governments have been doing around here for 10 or 12 years. Every year there are spending reductions; they look for savings every year, every budget. It's routine now. Across the whole breadth of spending, governments look for savings. They also look for revenues from disposal of assets in an orderly way.

So I'm going to suggest we do this. Let me just go back and recap where we are.

We're going to set aside two meetings for procurement. I'm suggesting February 24 and 26, when we come back.

The first week of March, we go to the stimulus package meeting to get an update on coordination.

On Thursday, March 5--and this is not a priority--I'm suggesting we go to the Public Service Commission. Well, I don't know if that is a significant priority. I was going to bundle the Public Service Commission and one of the appointments related to public service renewal. There was an appointment by the Privy Council. We should from time to time be looking at these appointments so we know that they know that we look at them. That is supposed to have the effect of improving the quality of these appointments.

We have a meeting on March 5. Do you think we could get a meeting to deal with the questions that have come up on greening, financing, and disposal of real estate? That's won't fully deal with all of Ms. Hall Findlay's questions. We could look for a subsequent meeting after that, depending on what evolves from that meeting. Definitely we need a subsequent meeting to look at other asset disposal issues.

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I was thinking that there may be a different way to bundle this. We could do greening in government, have some discussion with regards to the real property plan, and--some of this is going to play into that second meeting--maybe we could talk about the disposal of inventory.

You were speaking about saving money. We may want to speak to Treasury board about the expenditure review efforts they are undertaking within the cross-government effort. It may be an opportunity to discuss, at the same time as the real estate review, the expenditure review that's happening simultaneously. Both of those are an effort to come up with additional capital for the government to reallocate to other places. I don't know, but that may be a better and more appropriate match.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

My only concern is the amount of time, but I don't disagree at all.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I was thinking about your discussion, and real estate and the greening of government are two different sets of witnesses. I suspect that maybe the other two would be more appropriate to bring in together.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

We've got a handle on that. We've have taken four issues and turned them into two meetings: the greening and financing of real estate, and then disposal of assets and expenditure review.

Go ahead, Ms. Hall Findlay.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I think Mr. Warkentin was actually saying that the expenditure and asset sale piece were more tied together than the greening piece.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

That's right. I thought that's what I said. You're on the money; we're okay.

Those are two meetings we've bundled. Right now we're getting into timing issues. I'll ask the clerk if we have any deadlines--and I know we do; that's why I'm asking the question.

[The Clerk]

The only deadlines so far are for the supplementary estimates (C), which should be reported to the House before March 23. In order to do that, we would need to meet before March 12, because there's a week off after that, the week of March 16. In order to report, we'd have to report on March 13, which is a Friday, in the morning. That's the only thing.

There's another deadline if we want to study any of the appointments that were referred to us, those in the table I sent by e-mail. Those are due on March 27, so we would need to study them before then. The last day would be March 24 in order to report to the House on March 25.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Yes, the people who are appointed are just as nervous being reviewed after the deadline as before.

Anyway, there is a deadline, so we have to look at the supplementary estimates. We have March 10 and March 12.

By the way, did I not just receive the whole bundle of performance reports?

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Members have received the performance reports. I'll let you have some time, colleagues, to read all of them. If any issues come up in the reading, we can discuss future meetings on that. All right? Thank you.

Where are we heading on this now? Let's hear from Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

First of all, I asked to be recognized earlier because I wanted to lend my support to Ms. Finlay.

The greening of buildings and the sale of buildings are two different things. I think we will need to set aside more than one meeting to discuss these topics. In the case of greening operations, money is being invested, while in the case of real property sales, buildings are being sold for a profit. We need to be certain that we’re not confusing the two issues.

Secondly, I would like to suggest an additional possible topic for future study. The Canada Public Service Agency is slated to disappear. Its demise was reported in the Ottawa newspaper Le Droit this week. Our committee is responsible for issues affecting the Public Service. On the one hand, the Agency is slated to disappear, while on the other hand, we have learned that about two weeks ago, the Public Service awarded contracts valued at $55 million for staff recruitment. This is another aspect of the recovery plan that we could focus on. I would like us to look at turnover rates.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

All right. We were looking for a day to have the head of the Public Service Commission come in on the subject of the annual report and the appointee on public service renewal, and we could also address the same question as Madame Bourgeois has raised. Also, there are some questions about turnover. The clerk has just distributed a report on the issue of public service turnover. I expect colleagues to religiously read that report.

Madame Bourgeois, we'll have a meeting with the Public Service Commission at which all of these issues can be raised. We just have to pick a day. It could be March 5. Is there any objection to March 5 for the Public Service Commission? There isn't. Okay, it's March 5.

Now we go to the next week, March--

I'm sorry?