Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This meeting has gotten off to a fairly good start. Our basic problem as members of Parliament is that everybody owns this place but nobody owns the place. The Auditor General's view has been very helpful in at least crystallizing an awareness that there isn't an actual landlord. There might be something on paper, but nobody really carries the can on the place. There's no minister whose responsibility is to ensure that this place is the way it should be.
I appreciate the position the Minister of Public Works and the Deputy Minister of Public Works are in, that they own only a piece of this. They said it very clearly: they manage the renovation. They're managers. They're imported. They make sure the lawns are cut. Public Works does a lot of things, but Parliament has never said to the Minister of Public Works, you're in charge of the whole place, the meeting rooms and everything. It looks as though that has been a continuing problem for 140 years.
So let's look at the framework issue the Auditor General has pointed out. You just made some comments, Monsieur Guimont, about trying to renovate the framework that would manage the Hill. Could you shine some more light on that? Does your department have an objective, or has an objective been expressed by those non-landlords who are organizing this possible new framework for the management, ownership, landlording, husbandry, whatever it is of the Hill? It's not caretaking.