Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to elaborate on this subject.
Motion No. 300 passed with a great majority in the House of Commons. The concept was that we can create jobs, reduce operating costs in publicly owned buildings and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, all at no cost to the taxpayer because the private sector is willing to finance those jobs and be paid back slowly out of the energy savings. In other words, it is off balance sheet financing that we could use to finance this project.
There are 50,000 federally owned public buildings in the country. Only about 100 have had significant energy retrofitting done to them. Even at a 1,000 per year, it would take 50 years to finish the project.
We want to see the government, now that the motion has passed, to exercise this and expand the program so that all federally owned public buildings are retrofitted so that they are completely energy efficient and do not belch out harmful greenhouse gas emissions as they do today.