Currently, we are having several meetings with the Treasury Board Secretariat, Public Works and Procurement Canada, as well as with DND. I can speak only on the building side, but I think you can also extend it to transportation and other areas. I think the federal government has tremendous opportunities through procurement to drive innovation in the Canadian marketplace. You see pockets of it on building sites, as I mentioned in my remarks. I think there is way more opportunity to use that tool. I think Public Works, with their real property, is already doing really well and is very progressive in its thinking on what new and existing buildings can look like, and it has projects under way.
I think that DND, which is also a large owner—granted, their focus is on defence—also has an opportunity. The American army and navy have been investing in green building technology and renewable energy technology for at least a decade. They are leaders in that space and many projects have been done, obviously for security and for military reasons. These are cross-benefits that can be utilized.
Again, 60% of the federal buildings are owned and operated by the Department of National Defence, and this is an opportunity to look at—it's really critical—the assessment of where these opportunities exist for retrofit and for new buildings. Where do you get the biggest savings for DND and overall, also for the custodial departments? You really need a federal strategy that covers the entire federal building stock, and to use procurement to really drive innovation in the Canadian marketplace.
We have seen in the past that it's very effective. Very briefly, initially, about 10 years ago, the federal government and the governments across the country were leading to de-risk this kind of green building construction and retrofit, but over the last five years it was actually the private sector that took very big leaps forward in investing in buildings through pension funds and so on, to have very high-performing buildings, so the government played a very important role in making that happen.
Thank you.