We have heard talk about the maintenance deficit involving certain buildings belonging to Public Works and Government Services. I do not want to target them, but those are the figures we have. We are also aware of the policy and the desire of that department to sell off certain buildings and to leave them to the private sector. From what I understand, the government's philosophy is to deal with governmental affairs and to leave the ownership and management of buildings to the private sector, which they could then lease back. We might therefore want to sell some of our buildings.
Ms. Chaput said that the various departments were responsible for managing the life cycle of the buildings. Let's say that a maintenance request was put in for one of the buildings, for example one belonging to Public Works and Government Services or to another department. A department does inventory on one given year and the following year sees that they will need $3 billion, or 3 million or $300 million. The department will go and discuss this with program officers. How can you decide if this request is timely? You have many requests because the buildings are very old. How can you make a decision? Are you simply going to believe in the good faith of senior officials and tell yourself that they must certainly have carried out an appropriate inventory of their needs?
That is the same thing as having blind faith. I don't want to pass judgment on blind faith. I simply want to know if that is how things work, or do you really have the necessary tools to compare the requests to the real needs.