Madam Chair, what we've tried to do at the Treasury Board is recognize that we're not only talking about office space, but about what we call special purpose space as well. So for example, DND, the RCMP, or Agriculture Canada would have their own facilities in a certain geographical area, in addition to the office accommodation that their public servants may require in order to perform their functions.
We have been encouraging departments in specific geographical areas to, if nothing else, communicate what their requirements are to make sure they understand the overall federal presence in a particular area, so that if they're looking to offload some space, if it's excess to their needs, or if they're looking to acquire space, at least their colleagues in the other federal departments will be aware of that.
We have undertaken at the Treasury Board a number of what we call regional overviews. For example, we've done one on Vancouver, on Kingston, on Halifax, and on Ottawa over the past five or six years, where we have got together the real property managers of each department. We've put them in a room like this and indicated, “Give us your plans for the next five years in terms of your real property—where do you see it divesting and acquiring?—so that at least we have an idea”.
The office accommodation specifically, as you know, being the former minister, is the sole statutory responsibility of our colleagues at Public Works. Of course, they can't operate in a vacuum, because you can't be looking at an office space, whereas next door you have a special purpose space that may be more appropriate to look at as a package deal. So to the extent we are able, we coordinate the activities of real property managers to ensure that at least they're aware of what's going on, so that they're not working at cross-purposes, and more particularly, to take advantage of economic opportunities as they would come up.
Specifically on office accommodation, our colleagues at Public Works do ongoing reports on individual municipalities so that they are aware of housing public servants and what that would entail.