If you will allow me, I will answer your question.
The procedure is called a contract award notice. It is a very useful tool, because it allows all the competitors to know exactly what the customer—in this case, the Government of Canada—wants and the data that needs to be taken into account when purchasing and leasing property., You are aware of it, since you noted it, but I would like to stress that I doubled the period during which the contract award notice was in effect.
I’d like to get back to your question about the balance of land ownership. Mr. Proulx, you were part of the party in power, and what I inherited as Minister of Public Works and Government Services—our friends from the Bloc Québécois often refer to fiscal imbalance, and we speak of it too—is a great real estate imbalance. You had 13 years to resolve it. I therefore inherited a distribution of 77%-23%, and now you ask me to consider the geographic location of Crown corporation buildings. The fact that we don’t take the real estate property of the Canada Post Corporation and other Crown corporations into account, is not a whim. This is the way it is because during your government’s administration, you decided that in terms of governing, these corporations would be dealt with at arm’s length.
We have to exclude these corporations from our calculations because we can’t say on one hand that the Canada Post Corporation is autonomous, and on the other hand tell it to set up its offices on the corner of First Avenue and Twelfth Street in L’Ancienne-Lorette. That makes no sense. These corporations operate at arm’s length or they don’t.
However, because I know what you’re getting at, I firmly believe that there will be improvements in the balance in favour of the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, if only for economic reasons. We will probably need to expand our real estate portfolio. All things being equal, the possibility of our going to the Gatineau area is very good, given the financial terms offered. I would like to remind you that I inherited a situation that could have been much better, and I am sure you will agree with me on that.