Thank you.
To the Cement Association, the Green Budget Coalition, and Sustainable Prosperity, I have a question for you relative to government procurement and the role that it can play in the creation and support of a market.
When I was Minister of Public Works and we were doing government procurement, one of the things that I tried to insist on was life-cycle costing. Whenever we made an investment, I tried to focus on the whole life-cycle. If it was a vehicle, we calculated the energy cost over a period of time. If it was a building, we would consider whether we ought to invest the incremental difference to have a LEED's gold building. The cost up front of an item that will be more efficient over a longer period of time is often significantly higher up front. Would it make a significant difference, in the greening of government procurement and also support of the industries you're speaking of, if we were to change Treasury Board rules to ensure that we consider life-cycle costing, not simply up-front cost, on every government acquisition?