Government Operations Committee on Nov. 26th, 2007

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

In any event, if the committee wants to expand it beyond this particular sale and the question of whether or not buildings should be sold going forward, then the question is why? What exactly are we trying to find out?

At the end of the day, what we're trying to determine is whether taxpayers got good value for their money in a deal that just happened.

The second point, and the intent of this motion, is to determine on a go-forward basis what an appropriate policy is with respect to federal buildings. Is it appropriate or not appropriate to lease them back, and are our interests served by doing so? Those questions would seem to make sense for this committee to answer.

I don't see any benefit.... You talk about trying to focus on ensuring that we're actually getting to things that need answers. I don't see any benefit of adding on something additional to this that rings to me just to be partisan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'll be very quick, just to clarify for Mr. Holland the rationale for this.

If you're going to look at this issue and the concerns of people--certainly of constituents of mine—you have to look at where this came from and why we are selling off our buildings.

As you know, Mr. Holland, this idea began when your party was in government, and that's why it's important. It's not about having weeks and weeks of study on this. You've already mentioned that a go-forward basis is to provide some backup as to how we got here. If you're going to have a fulsome policy discussion about the sell-off of public buildings....

I'm just giving you the rationale: it's not partisan, it's actually doing the homework. I think it's important homework to do. How did we get here? You might find that we get a better idea; we don't know.

The fact of the matter is that we're here, people are concerned about it, and I think we have to understand how we got here. That's the only reason for the addition to your motion—which I support, by the way, with that spirit in mind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'll ask the clerk to read the amendments, then call the question.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Michel Marcotte]

You all have the motion.

At the end of the first page of the motion, after the item on the confidential information memorandum, there will be a new item, to read: “Any plans the previous governments had regarding the sale and leaseback of federal public buildings”. Then, after the last item, we would add the following: “Plans the government has to provide financial assistance to municipalities that will be affected by the sell-off of federal public buildings”.

(Amendments agreed to)

(Motion as amended agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

By the way, before I adjourn the meeting, the clerk will be circulating a calendar that will see us through to December 12. He has tried to fill in most of the spots there. I think he's done a fairly good job. He'll be doing that tomorrow morning. It looks pretty good to me, and it follows through on the discussions we had before.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.