Government Operations committee  No, all I can confirm, as I said earlier, is that we are working with the Department of National Defence to develop an open competitive process, and when the government makes a decision it will obviously announce it. In terms of one point you raised, participation in the joint strike fighter program, I think the important point to note is participation in the program does not commit anyone to purchasing the F-35.

Government Operations committee  No, I think the main consideration is that by participating in the program, it provides the mechanism whereby Canadian companies can compete for contracts and become part of the supply chain for the F-35 process, which quite a number have already done. I think significantly more money has been provided to Canadian companies under those contracts than the government has paid to be part of the program.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. As you've noted, the government has made a commitment to replace the CF-18, and to make sure, obviously, that the air force has the plane it needs to do its job. The department is working with the Department of National Defence to design, as the government committed to, an open and transparent competition process to replace the CF-18 fighter jets.

Government Operations committee  The intent is to vacate the Centre Block in 2018 and to move people into alternate locations while, obviously, the rehabilitation work is done in the Centre Block. I'll turn to Rob Wright, who is the assistant deputy minister in charge of our parliamentary precinct. I'm sure he can provide you a little more detail, if you'd like, on where people are being moved.

Government Operations committee  I don't have that information, but I'll turn that over to my colleague, Kevin Radford, who heads up our real property area. He may or may not have it, and if he doesn't, we'll make that available.

Government Operations committee  The last thing I would add is that sometimes work is distributed over two or three contracts. There is not one single contract for everything. In this case, this is a new contract. It's not an extension of a previous contract. It does go to finding things you didn't expect and basically having not just one contract for everything but contracts for different parts of the work.

Government Operations committee  The role of our department in affordable housing will be a support role, but a very significant support role. To date, we have a full inventory of buildings and structures that the department has, which have some potential for being turned over to affordable housing. That is feeding into work being led by CMHC, which is taking the broad policy lead across government because, as the minister mentioned, other departments have potential properties and structures that could be used.

Government Operations committee  That actually does come up from time to time, particularly when you're renovating buildings that have significant historical features that have to be preserved. Obviously, we do inspections of the buildings as part of setting the initial estimates and we often engage third-party experts to do that.

Government Operations committee  Well—

Government Operations committee  And that's what I was explaining. At the moment that's the situation. There are no longer those provisions in contracts. I think the government is looking at the issue.

Government Operations committee  As the minister said, significant Canadian companies are part of the consortium that won the contract, so there will be very significant Canadian content. I would have to look into the question you raise about whether they intend to use Canadian steel because, off the top of my head, I don't have the answer to that.

Government Operations committee  In terms of the fair wages policy, under this contract and any other contract we enter into, anyone building in Canada has to comply with all federal and provincial legislation and meet all the existing requirements—

Government Operations committee  In terms of the approach on buildings I think what you're referring to are situations when we are in buildings that are close to the end of their life and need very significant refurbishment. That's the bulk of what the real property folks deal with. When buildings get to that situation, there's a cost-benefit analysis done, where we look at all the options: would it be better to sell the building, would it be better to invest and refurbish the entire building, would it be better to look at some public-private partnership to see if one could build a new building?

Government Operations committee  We sold 21 for a total of about $10.3 million.

Government Operations committee  I would hope not, but we certainly recognize that there are some issues in that area. There is also the issue of us having real estate and occupying buildings that are not completely full, while in the same communities we're leasing other space. One of our priorities, which touches very much on the point you raised, is to really try to maximize the use of our space.