Environment Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

[Kathleen Owens]

I can also speak about Treasury Board contracting policy. There's nothing specific in policy right now, but certainly departments can put those kinds of clauses within their contracts. I think that's something that is certainly possible within contract law.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Sure, it's possible, but I feel there could be a role for the federal government to be playing in leadership. If nobody actually says to departments, “We feel this is important and we are either encouraging you or requiring you to do it”, then we're going to continue in the status quo situation, which is that it's not happening.

[Kathleen Owens]

Right.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. It's not there then.

[Kathleen Owens]

There could be some work to do, maybe with PSPC from their perspective, on standardized clauses.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

That's the “do no damage” policy. The other is heritage first. I believe that PSPC is the largest holder of office space, as an example, and we've heard that, in many cases, heritage buildings lend themselves to adaptive reuse, maybe things like office spaces. We've heard that, in some jurisdictions in the United States, they will actually require the federal government to go into heritage buildings first before they allow new construction or to undertake construction.

Do we have anything like that or is it up to each department? Does PSPC, in the acquisition of leased offices or things, look at heritage? Is that on the radar at all?

[Kevin Radford]

Typically, when we are looking at leased space, office space is looked at as a commodity. We have about 1,500 or so leases across the country. It's actually a larger number than that, but it's over 1,500 leases across the country for office space specifically. However, within our owned portfolio, from a footprint perspective, it's about 50% owned, largely with the majority of the office space here in the Ottawa area. About 50% of that owned environment is here, but the rest is in leases in and around the downtown core and east and west.

An example of an owned office space would be the Carling campus, which is currently under construction. It will be the home for National Defence. The heritage components associated with that Nortel facility would be the age, so we would work closely with FHBRO. If it was something like a West Memorial Building, which is something that maybe you're a little more familiar with, and if we were looking at revitalizing that right now in order to move the Supreme Court into that design-built office space, which was designed as office, and turn it into a temporary courthouse for the Supreme Court, we would put through our contracts all kinds of provisions to maintain the heritage of that facility, but also to look at ways to balance accessibility, security associated with the courts....

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

You're talking more on the owned side of things.

[Kevin Radford]

Yes, that's on the owned side.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Frankly, I expect the government to do that.

[Kevin Radford]

Right.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

What about on the lease side of things? Do we consider heritage in that equation at all?

[Kevin Radford]

I don't believe so, but that would be something I would have to get back to the committee on.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

I'm going to move into more of the “federal house in order” piece. I worked in the federal public service for more than three decades and I've seen this idea of demolition by neglect first-hand. I've seen it across departments. In the Treasury Board submission, there were a couple of things here, like the idea of organizations being challenged with conservation of heritage buildings, or this idea of chronic under-recapitalization. The argument that I came up against many times in dealing with departments was the notion that heritage falls outside of the custodians' core program mandates. There were some that were more chronic offenders or abusers of that and I've used it before.

We had invited National Defence here today, but they weren't able to join us. They had the beautiful, FHBRO-rated buildings. The Work Point Barracks in the Victoria area comes to mind. That was demolished, in part, because it had been neglected and was surplus. It was knocked down much to the outcry of the community. There are examples that I am aware of, over three decades, of the federal government losing property.

It's more for the sake of my colleagues, but you had mentioned, Ms. Owens, about how you can revoke authorities of a department head. Has that ever happened?

[Kathleen Owens]

For a department that didn't make best efforts, is that what you're talking about?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Yes, exactly, or in chronic—

[Kathleen Owens]

I've only been in the job for less than year, but as far as I know, for that particular incident it hasn't, but that's something I can check on and get back to you.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. It would be useful to know how seriously the situation.... It always seemed to me that you might get a slap on the wrist, but Treasury Board will never take away your authority, so you can knock down buildings and you can ignore policy. I think that's one of the issues with policy. It can be ignored.

What sort of enforcement and penalties are there?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Sorry, we're running out of time. Maybe you can—

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. We have another round, so maybe someone wants to pick that up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That sounds good. I'll leave that with the next round.

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

I'm going to direct my questions first to Mr. Wright.

Many Canadians would be disappointed if someone at this table didn't ask about the costs of the parliamentary rehabilitation that's taking place. I'm talking about the Wellington Building—the one we're in right now—and the Sir John A. Macdonald Building. They are beautiful buildings, and I love the reno that's been done here.

Even though Canadians are worried about the costs, because there are figures in the billions that are being thrown around and no one knows for sure, when I speak to my constituents and ask whether we should be protecting and rehabilitating these buildings, the response is absolutely, yes. These are expensive rehabilitation projects, and it's a cost that we as Canadians, by and large, are willing to pay, but we have a right to know the cost.

Can I ask specifically, how much was the Sir John A. Macdonald Building rehab project worth?

[Robert Wright]

Absolutely. I'll unpack all of those costs for you. One thing that's important to preface that with is that we produce an annual report that focuses on all the costs. We put that on our website. We send it to the Treasury Board Secretariat, and it's available for all Canadians.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Yes. I'm running out of time, so I specifically want to ask about the buildings. I'm going to ask about estimated costs as well. First is the Sir John A. Macdonald Building.

[Robert Wright]

The Sir John A. Macdonald cost $99.5 million. This building here, 180 Wellington, was $425 million.