Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for the record, I think it should be stated that the information Mr. Ramsay and I refer to in terms of the landlord agreeing to cover the majority of the cost comes from written information that we received from the Minister. We can't really table those, I guess, but it's stated clearly and I guess Minister Dent wasn't made aware of that. But it has been provided to all the Members, this information that the landlord has agreed to pay a majority of the renovation costs because they feel that it is in line with what they had been planning for the mall where they see more spaces turning into office spaces, I guess. I don't know.
One of the reasons Mr. Roland gave in terms of why the decision was made not to re-open this competition once the three proposals were received and all three were found to be not acceptable, the decision was then only made to go to those three to see if there were any alternative spaces and in the end the third one, the successful one, was able to provide a space. The reason given was that, one, they didn't think there was any other space in Yellowknife. I mean, that's what was provided to us. This is one of the answers that we got from Mr. Roland. Two was that they felt that it was good for the government to save on advertising costs that it would cost to re-run this ad. I don't know, those two reasons don't seem to justify to me a reason for a sole source for the government to enter into a five-year lease contract and two more options to renew that would in all likelihood turn into a 15-year lease. That's a long-term financial commitment and for the government to say we just assumed that there wasn't any other space and that advertising costs would be too large, that seems to me that it doesn't meet the test that I would think one would have to go through or the government should go through when deciding whether or not they should go with sole source or not. So I would like to ask Mr. Dent, or maybe Mr. Voytilla has this information, what was the basis or evidence that suggested that there was probably no other office space in Yellowknife?
I want to point out again that the first RFP advertisement was only out for 18 days. I don't know if that is normal time. I mean, when I was looking for staff in my office I made sure I ran it in September, not in August, because I knew everybody was away in August and I made sure I ran it for three weeks. If you're looking for office space, something that permanent, you would think that you would advertise for longer. So that's 18 days and on that basis they have concluded that they wouldn't come up with any other space. The second thing is how much would the advertising costs be? I'm sure it's in the couple of thousands, $2,000 or $3,000. I don't know. I'd like to know how much the advertising cost is that made them justify that answer. Thank you.