Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll be very brief. I’ve said most of what I had wanted to state on this project. Of course, practising good government, we’ll live with the will of this House.
We do have concerns, though. We probably would not be in this situation if the facility that we call the Perry Building had not developed some serious concerns, some structural defects that would force us to abandon that facility. It’s not really an issue of pathetic planning. It’s just an issue where we really didn’t have and we still don’t have another place to go. There is one other small space that the Member for Mackenzie Delta has mentioned that is vacant. But other than that, there’s really no other place to go.
I certainly appreciate the feedback from the Members regarding the process that this project has taken. I think there is due process that has to be followed, and we expected that we did do that in this case. We have to recognize, though, that we didn’t have the opportunity to put it through the business planning process or any other opportunity to bring it forward until now. It has had some very serious scrutiny from our departments to see what the other options are. We did go out to an RFP. There was no interest. We advertised it and brought it to the area and to the North, and nobody took us up on that offer. And if they had, we probably would not be in this situation.
We did do cost-benefit analyses of some of the submissions — unsolicited, I should add, submissions — that were made to us, and they did not, from an economic standpoint, make any sense. I can guarantee I would not be able to convince the Members of this House to support those. So we had to look at what we can do.
There is a sense of an emergency. We have health issues in almost all the buildings that we are currently occupying that are government owned, including one of the other buildings that was condemned, which is owned by a southern company, I should add. We do have safety issues with the income support office. It’s going to require at least a half a million dollar upgrade if we don’t have this office moved to a better facility.
The Finance Minister has mentioned a number of times that it’s recommended that we have a balanced portfolio. Probably Inuvik is one of the most lopsided investment portfolios we have, because almost all of our office space is leased. Only 7 per cent is what the government owns. Even if we went ahead with this project, which would be our own project, the portfolio would still be 62 per cent leased, which is more in line with what the industry best practices recommend.
I also appreciate the fact that Members want more studies. Of course, the previous government had wanted fewer studies. That’s something that we have to, I guess, start doing more of.
I certainly appreciate the Members’ comments that we need to own the building. I think that’s a very important acknowledgement. Many Members have pointed out that this is a very important project, and I agree. We have energy issues with the current facilities. We have old facilities. I don’t know how much longer we can accommodate them.
Can we move it back a year? I supposed we could. But, Mr. Chairman, I’m pretty certain that we will not be able to come back with the same dollar figures. I would expect those dollars are going to increase. We’ve seen it almost with every other project. Every project that’s been deferred, carried over, we’ve seen huge increases in the costs. Those are some of the things that we have to acknowledge.
Mr. Chairman, when the Perry Building was no longer available to us, that was 25,000 square feet that we lost, and this facility is 37,000 square feet, which will include the offices that were in the Perry Building plus a couple more. I thought we gave comfort to all the proponents that we would continue to lease all the current leases we had with the different developers in Inuvik, and they seemed to be okay with that message, but I’m hearing different now.
Mr. Chairman, we will live with the will of this House, and we will do whatever the motion decides of us.