Thank you, Madam Bull.
I found this an excellent presentation. It was very clear. I think it's given us a number of issues that we should be looking at. It's incumbent upon us.
I am very partial to our heritage buildings. When I was a wee lad growing up in a northern mining town, our notion of the federal assets was the Parliament Buildings. When we finally got to come to Ottawa, we did what every Canadian seems to do: we came to the wonderful grounds, the great open public commons that exist on Parliament Hill, and saw the buildings.
I find today, when I see all the young school groups coming, I'm ashamed at the condition of the buildings. West Block looks as though it's being held together by my old granny's knickers. We have trapezes all over the place, not because we're building, but to catch falling chimneys. These are the premier federal buildings of Canada. If you walk through West Block and you see the plastic sheets up on the inside to hold the rainwater, it's a shame. These are symbols of what our country is.
I know for a fact that the fixing of these buildings is difficult, because you need stonemasons, and stonemasons are rare these days. We actually built, I understand, a team of stonemasons to come to Ottawa to put this together, and now they're leaving because nobody at Treasury Board seems to want to actually okay the work. The longer we go with West Block deteriorating, East Block deteriorating.... We need a vision here to actually deal with this.
If we actually get through this next three-week monkey period, I would certainly like in the spring, if we are still around, to raise the issue of our federal buildings here on Parliament Hill and to see what plans are in place to move beyond holding them together with nylons and strings to actually building them.
But that was an opening rant, because I think it is indicative of the need for us to be more careful, as a federal government, with our federal assets.
I'm very interested in what you're saying about this issue of covenant and title. I would actually ask that information on how the sale of these buildings was done be brought forward so we can see if the covenant is on title. Does it need to be? These would be recommendations that we would certainly be able to bring forward. I think it's incumbent upon us to bring them forward.
I'm going to ask you just a simple question, because I think you've been very clear in what needs to be done and clear in your recommendations.
In terms of the government's need to ensure the development and protection of heritage sites, we did have a program--did we not?--that encouraged private sector companies to actually renovate and maintain buildings rather than turning them into landfill. These were not necessarily federal buildings. These were buildings like Barrington Street, in Halifax, and the old Gooderham and Worts in Toronto, places that otherwise would have gone under the wrecking ball. It was actually an innovative tax incentive program that allowed the private sector to decide that it's worth saving these buildings and it's worth making them usable in the 21st century. That program was cancelled recently.
Can you explain what you think would need to be done in order to encourage that these heritage buildings not hit the landfill?