Public Accounts committee  I might add a little postscript. Their lease has come up again now, and we are now going for a full tender for that agency. We shall see what the best price is. Let me assure you, this time I think we're going to execute—

Public Accounts committee  Well, in the end, the minister speaks for his or her department; they're one and the same from our point of view. When a department asks something, we don't look at it as the bureaucratic level; we look at it.... They would more often than not inform their minister, “We're not going to go ahead, and we would like your support to change course”, and so forth.

Public Accounts committee  Because you learn over time. You see what happens; you make sure you learn from the past. Perhaps we were too accommodating in saying if that's your need, we'll try to meet it. Now there's much more scrutiny; we have goals, we want to save money, and so on. So things are improving in that regard.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, what can I say, other than that I will be accountable to you and will bring you the numbers as soon as we can make them available? We are in negotiations in a commercial way with the property owner. It's just not possible for me to satisfy your desire for greater detail.

Public Accounts committee  The final authority is the minister's. In this case, Mr. Goodale acted on a recommendation from our staff that this transaction be done the way it was done. So he acted on our advice.

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps I can add one thing. I think what Mr. McGrath was referring to was the fact that we are negotiating much more aggressively on leases, and taking longer-term leases is reducing the average cost of leases in this market, which is good for the taxpayer. On the issue of the value that finally was acquired in the JDS situation, you have to remember, first of all, that at the point that we were looking at it--again, it's a unique property--the price that we were able to negotiate, because there were other interested parties, was what we arrived at.

Public Accounts committee  Well, you have to look at it long term. We're in this market for a long time, and had we been able to acquire it at a certain price that would have been good value.... You know, markets change, so we have to go with it. One thing I should point out--

Public Accounts committee  The thing is that as a government agency we can't speculate in real estate. We can't bank land or say, “Let's acquire greenfield sites and wait for things to happen.” This happens in the private sector. In this case, a private sector developer took a risk, and so on, but overall, over a long period of time, we try to make sure good value is obtained.

Public Accounts committee  No, what we did was say that given that the department doesn't want to move, we recommend they be left where they are, not have any more expansion, and reduce their fit-up costs, and that we try to find another tenant—that was given the conditions we were facing at the time.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  Well, first of all, I should say it is not common but not unusual for a department to change course. We just discussed a change of course with the defence department. There have been many other examples where a department has said, for one reason or another, they don't want to go ahead with what they've been working with us on for some time.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it would be approved by the ministers of the Treasury Board and then executed by our minister.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. That is who is accountable to the department, yes.

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps I can help with a little more information on the various needs departments have. As a matter of fact, the RCMP, Defence, and others have talked to us over a long period of time about their needs. There's a very long cycle of trying to locate appropriate space, trying to locate appropriate funding, and then trying to make the needs meet what the departments have.

Public Accounts committee  If you want to look at our portfolio, we have a very low vacancy rate—half what any other operator of real estate has—so this is a very anomalous situation. We have, I suppose, the legal right. But in practice, we work with our clients to see what they need. They have operational needs.