Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning to each of you.
My colleague Scott Simms sends his regrets, as he's recuperating.
It's very timely that I'm here. One of our cultural landmarks in Labrador, the Point Amour lighthouse, which Skipper Noreau may be familiar with, celebrated 150 years of its first lighting on April 1. The community organizations down there, in conjunction with various levels of government, have done a fantastic job in preserving that particular structure and the surrounding buildings. I have a picture here, from Labrador Life, commemorating this particular icon along the coast of Labrador. And there are others, certainly.
In principle, this is good legislation, and from what I'm hearing, technically it seems to be good legislation. But I have a couple of questions.
You talk about divestiture. The federal government already has a divestiture policy. I'm not totally familiar with it, but usually, if you have a federally owned building or some asset, it would go to the province first, or it may be to the municipality, then down to a non-profit organization, and last but not least maybe to an individual.
Does this at all affect that policy? Does it strengthen that particular policy? What does this do differently from what already exists?
So we have a divestiture policy. Now, when it comes to other types of crown assets, at times, such as in the case of certain ports or harbour infrastructure, the government will put in place specific divestiture dollars. In the last budget, for instance, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced, I believe, $10 million to remediate or bring certain pieces of infrastructure up to par before they divested them. Would something like that be contemplated, out of this legislation?
Thirdly, you say that the government already has, for federally owned buildings and assets, an obligation to maintain them, to keep them at a certain level. That's the argument I've heard some witnesses make.
How does this differ, in terms of the obligations the federal government has? I'm thinking that while we can talk about statutory legal protection that would institute certain standards, even in saying that there must be some costs involved. While we advocate for this bill, we have to advocate for additional dollars, because there is some fear that you will take already-existing infrastructure dollars and stretch them or put them somewhere else. That's a concern.
If we're going to put all of our cards on the table, if we're going to pass this bill, we need to have some commitment from the government that it comes with some money. It has to come with some money, and we need to see some identified.
I'll just leave that open to you people.