Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, for whom I have a great deal of respect, for allowing me to say that yes, we must work with the Premier of Quebec to see what can be done.
I want to come back to the building that was announced yesterday. It is a new building, 20,000 square meters, to accommodate the needs established by the Canada Revenue Agency. The current building is 17,000 square meters.
As for the timeline, we will be launching a bidding process in the coming weeks for the design, geotechnical studies, and environmental studies. The bidding process for the builder will be launched in 2021. Construction will begin in 2022 and will be completed in 2024. The reason it will take so long is because we chose to have one of the most modern and greenest buildings in the country. Yesterday we told employees that at the very least the building would meet LEED certification standards. In other words, the building will be the envy of public servants across the country. It will be the most technologically advanced and one of the greenest buildings in Canada. All these stages take time.
When we build something today, we build it for the 21st century. People expect us to build green, modern buildings that are on the cutting edge of technology. That is what we promised the tax centre employees we would do yesterday.