Government Operations committee  No, I'm sorry. I don't have that information.

Government Operations committee  We can actually speak to that. I don't know, Berny, from your experience of having done that for your own department, if you can comment.

Government Operations committee  It's hard to speak to that in the abstract. It's rare that just one tiny element--not that it's necessarily a tiny element--is the difference between two projects. The decision to take one lease space over another is made on a case-by-case basis. It's not a decision that I myself

Government Operations committee  I can tell you from a common sense perspective that if, for example, it means there will be significant energy savings, it would have a big impact. But I can't speak to the decision-making process on leasing more comprehensively than that. I don't know if, Shirley, you have any

Government Operations committee  It's an interesting question. As far as I know, there is no formal process for doing that. We frequently meet with companies that are interested in talking to us about their technologies. We are open to doing that. From where my office sits, we certainly work hard to make connect

Government Operations committee  As I mentioned, there would be no plan to specify a particular technology.

Government Operations committee  Yes, the Normand-Maurice Building in Montreal has some geothermal capacity. I've anecdotally heard that the Canada Border Services Agency has at least one facility that makes use of it. There is some out there. I suspect that the more we look to meet LEED gold and above requireme

Government Operations committee  I can tell you about certain types of activities. For example, Public Works has a publication called Doing Business that is designed to reach out to companies that do business with the federal government. There recently was an article in it on a number of LEED buildings that Publ

Government Operations committee  You are right to raise the issue of leasing. It's an important issue, and green leasing is one of the things we are working very actively on. For our long-term leases, we do require that buildings be LEED gold. For leases of greater than 10,000 square metres, as those leases are

Government Operations committee  As far as I know, Mr. Chairman, there is no performance measure I could point to that would demonstrate in a comprehensive way the performance of our leases. Really the approach we have taken is to have these exigences up front to ensure that walking into the lease we're getting

Government Operations committee  Could I ask for some clarification? You said that we've had difficulty disposing of it. Could you explain a little more about what you mean by that?

Government Operations committee  To date, we haven't had difficulty disposing of it. But I can tell you that you're right and there is an issue. For something like paper, there is likely to be a cost associated with recycling paper in the future, whereas there has not been a cost associated with it in the past.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chairman, it's my understanding that colleagues dealing with the accelerated infrastructure spending have been to this committee and have had a conversation about that particular program.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I would find it very hard to speculate about that. At this time what I can say, though, is that the environmental objectives that we have for our regular spending within Public Works and Government Services, the standards that we work towards, will be no different for

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, what I would say with respect to this is that often these projects take some time to plan and develop. Shovel-ready LEED platinum projects are not sort of on a shelf, and therefore it may not be as easy as one might think to do that kind of thing in a highly accelerate