Government Operations committee  I'm not familiar with that being an issue per se in the construction, to actually certify the building. Obviously there was a need for people to have a certain accreditation to be able to do that, and certainly my understanding is that this has grown exponentially. But we're happ

Government Operations committee  I certainly appreciate and applaud their environmental efforts, but I don't think that's a decision they're going to let me make.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee.

Government Operations committee  We have a number of contracts where we have purchased green electricity. Right here in Ottawa we have a substantial contract in place for that, and certainly in Alberta, where there is a supply as well. With the last contract we put in place there, 85% of the power that Public Wo

Government Operations committee  As always, on an initiative like this, leadership is very important. It's very symbolic. When we talk about the executive fleet, for example, that means something, because people watch what leaders are doing, and departments watch what their ministers are doing and what the membe

Government Operations committee  In fact, those programs are very complementary. The LEED standard speaks to how we actually build our buildings. The kinds of considerations that are taken into account include the site itself, water efficiency, materials and resources that are actually used in construction, what

Government Operations committee  We've made the commitment. We've had to wait. BOMA just put this in place very recently and they've had to get their capacity up as well, because they actually come in and do an independent verification audit of the building. So on April 1 we start to unroll this. Actually, thi

Government Operations committee  I think that may be information we would have to get back to you with. I assure you they're not all like Place du Portage.

Government Operations committee  You're right. I've seen figures of the numbers on the Experimental Farm, for example, and all those itsy bitsy little buildings seem to be included. But we can certainly get that information back to you.

Government Operations committee  The standard that we have for our buildings, being new buildings, being LEED Gold, has been in place just since the spring of 2005. We have 17 buildings in the federal government that we believe we can get certification for. There has been a lot of work done in buildings, but in

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of ways in which the buildings are upgraded. One is through the program that my colleague from Natural Resources described, the federal buildings initiative, where the company would come in and do the work and that work would be paid for through the savings. F

Government Operations committee  Shirley, I think you have the data on that. Could you share it with the group?

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I'll just say at the outset that this is always an issue when you're looking at any kind of technology. There are pros and cons to it. We have been looking at alternative fuels. We do use ethanol. As a matter of fact, there's an increase in the use of ethanol, and there are cer

Government Operations committee  The meeting we had this year with the provinces would suggest to me that every province is pretty much taking steps here. British Columbia is very good, and they have a lot of talent. Maybe it's the climate that promotes a lot of energy in the green building area, but they're c