Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a final thought here. When you consider $266,000 approved in the last supplementary appropriation and $115,000 this time -- granted it's capital budget -- one could only wonder what we could do with that kind of money if we were to give it to private lawyers to take on files. I used to have Legal Aid files when I used to practice and many cases are approved for $1,000, $1,500 and $2,000 for these sorts of cases. Most lawyers in town are willing to take on files at a real discounted rate. Actually, it's way too low now for them, to the point where they've determined that they're not going to take as many as they could had the tariff been able to go up a little. I understand the Minister's argument that there is a sense of urgency here, because we need to have the second clinic in order to serve the needs of these clients, but I have to argue that it's not like there aren't other ways until this gets sorted in a regular budgetary session where we could argue the points and debate about whether or not the second clinic is more desirable to raising the tariff of the money that government is paying to private lawyers to take on some of these files and what's the offsetting advantage in not having to have our own government office open, a second Legal Aid office open. But where there are conflicts, private lawyers could take on cases and give them more. It could have been $20 an hour more or something and that could have settled this problem. With the way this has been introduced in a supplementary budget on a piecemeal basis, and Mr. Hawkins and I and lots of others sit on the Social Programs committee and I don't recall that we had a debate about whether the direction the government is taking is the one that we had full knowledge of. We sort of approved the extra lawyers because how would you say no to that? I mean, we've been arguing for extra legal services for years. It's just that we didn't have the full picture to really argue about how to support it, to what extent and with full information. Now we are where we are.
The second point is what Mr. Pokiak was raising, Mr. Chairman, what you were raising on this side is important because the information that Mr. Roland gave us -- and I understand he's not able to be here -- but it's the government's information to us that said there were concerns raised by the client; the client being the Legal Services Board, I'm sure, or Justice, or whoever the client is. There were concerns raised about the layout of the office and privacy of the clients. It's our understanding that the landlord was able to resolve this. I'm reading almost verbatim from the information that Mr. Roland gave us, that the landlord agreed to on the space configuration and application of a window treatment. Those are extra deals that the landlord gave. More importantly, the landlord agreed to pay for the majority of the costs for tenant improvements and that this deal that the government got is much lower than market value for that sort of space. Why is that important?
I know Mr. Dent is saying well, we asked for $115,000 because that's what we thought it would be and we had to ask for it under special warrant because it was an emergency, but we don't know if we're going to spend it or not. Okay, well, if we get a deal with the landlord we're going to spend less. What kind of budgeting process is that? We're sitting here saying okay. What we're arguing is this is a lot of money to spend. With $115,000 you could buy a mobile home in my riding with that. You could hire a brand-new lawyer with that. Now you're saying okay, we needed $115,000 to renovate. Renovate, okay. Just to renovate. We could get 5,000 files approved with $110,000. So we're going to renovate and now all the information we got from Mr. Roland is don't worry, we got a really good deal. It wasn't our idea that because I made a big fuss about government going and renting a shoe store to turn it into an office. So the government tells me, well, actually it wasn't our idea, it was their idea. They wanted to turn, they really thought they had this plan, the landlord had a plan to change the shoe store into a retail store and we're not going to cover any costs. They're going to do that. It's their idea and they're going to give us a deal on how to frost the windows; clear, beautiful, retail store windows. We're just going to frost it up. But you know, we're not going to pay for it, the landlord is going pay for it. I'm saying that's great, you got the deal, but what's the deal? How much are they paying for it? Because it matters if we're approving $115,000 for renovations or $90,000 for renovations or $50,000 for
renovations. What the Minister here is saying is well, it's just a ballpark figure of $115,000. That's what it's going to cost to renovate 1,800 square feet and just give it to us. Actually, he's not even asking to give it to us because it's already been given. We just have to rubber stamp this thing. So we're not questioning whether you knew this when you went to FMBS, but now that we know and we've been given the information from Mr. Roland that the landlord made all sorts of deals with the government to get this deal, I want to know what kind of deal we're getting.
Lastly, I don't understand why the Minister, Mr. Dent, indicated that when he appeared before us in the Social Programs committee he said to us that he was hoping this facility would be opening by October 1st. It's October 25th now and that store is still in place. What happened there? Shouldn't there be any questions raised as to whether or not that space is even available? Was there any information? Did Public Works and Services go down and say what's happening with this? I certainly would not want to be in the position of approving the government going in somewhere and offering or working out a deal with the landlord to say, hey, we're looking for this place for five, 10, or 15 years and the landlord just kicking out a store. Because who could blame them? Everybody wants to get a deal with the government, but government should be in the position of promoting small businesses, not be a party to anywhere where we're somehow inducing a store being removed or something. I don't have any evidence to suggest that, but I don't understand what's going on because the Minister is suggesting that...Well, he stated he was hoping to be there by October 1st. Now he wants to be there by November 1st, by December 1st. As far as I know, anybody who passes by that the store in that mall, the store is there in full operation. So what's going on? Thank you.