Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have presented a motion to the clerk--because I think the details are very important--that we ask the minister to release all the relevant documents surrounding the confidential information memorandum. That would include the operating expenses, the taxes, the management fees, and the detailed schedule of capital improvements. I have submitted that to the clerk. I just thought I would bring that to your attention.
I would like to pick up on my colleague's question, because I think it is a big issue--what we are going to do at the end of 25 years. I don't think we need a professor to tell us this is a great time to sell--of course it's a great time to sell. But what about having to buy it back?
Since I haven't seen a plan to get rid of the public service in 25 years, I'd like to talk about what happens at the end of this deal. It looks to me like we're looking at an elaborate accounting shell game here. This government will get an incredible one-year boost in their bottom line and look like they're managing our assets well--they'll have amortized the loss to the taxpayers over the 25 years--until the moment comes when key pieces of urban real estate are no longer in our hands and we have to find a place to put our staff.
I don't know if this was in the purview of your study or not, but if we go back to 1982 and look at the real estate value of federal buildings in key urban markets like Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, what the value of those buildings would have been in 1982 compared to what they are in 2007, we'd see they've probably jumped fivefold to tenfold.
Have you looked at any of the realistic costs, the real estate values, given the previous 25 years and what we would be expecting in the next 25 years?