Thank you, Madam Chair.
At the Auditor General we are always reluctant to comment on what we call machinery of governments. Government can organize itself as it wishes. That being said, I think there are advantages obviously to having more centralized service and expertise in leasing of office accommodation.
The difficulty we were raising here is the department's view that this is a free good. Actually the charge comes into the department as charge without costs, or services provided without cost. So they don't in many cases actually see themselves as managing this cost. There's actually no incentive in the system for a government department to reduce its space, to find cheaper accommodation. They don't get any real benefit from that. What we're saying is yes, there can be the shared responsibility, but you have to have an incentive in the system so that people will move to reduced space or to a less expensive area of town. Otherwise why would they do that?
The other difficulty we note is the way the funding works. In many of the cases we present in the report, the analysis done by Public Works would show that purchasing is the least-cost option. We were told in many cases it's because the funding isn't available in that year to actually purchase, whereas there is a smaller amount available for a lease so leases are signed over a longer period of time. There needs to be better incentives to go to the less expensive options.