Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Infrastructure about who exactly the GNWT pays its rent to. My first question is: how much a year do we pay in leasing to southern landlords?
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every year, we pay approximately $18 million. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That's the $18 million that I really would encourage the department to look at and see if we can make that a smaller number and give that to some northern businesses. One of my concerns is that our Leasing of Improved Real Property Policy only permits us to pay a premium to a northern business, and if we are going to rent from a southern business, it actually has to be cheaper to lease as opposed to own. I am a little concerned that, as these buildings have been sold off, resold, merged, and acquiesced over the years, we have fallen out of compliance with our own policy. My question to the Minister is: is the Minister confident that that $18 million is, in fact, in compliance with our own leasing policy?
Yes, we are in compliance with the Leasing of Improved Real Property Policy.
I struggle with how that is the case. In a previous analysis, it showed that it's actually cheaper for us to own our buildings than it is, often, to lease them. This was part of the analysis that justified building the new government building and justified the GNWT building large office buildings in the past was that we could do it cheaper to own than lease. How does the Minister rectify saying that we are paying $18 million to southern landlords with the fact that we have previously concluded that its cheaper to own our own buildings as opposed to leasing them?
If the Member is able to share their document so that we can review it and perhaps be happy to respond because, right now, I am not sure how to answer without any context to this document that the Member is referring to.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The document I'm mostly talking about is the fact that we built a giant building, and we decided not to lease it. My final question to the Minister here is: if, in fact, we are renting any of this $18 million to a non-northern landlord, will the Minister commit to conducting the cost benefit analysis of lease to own versus the policy and make sure we are not, in fact, paying a premium to any of these southern landlords? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We will review these leases as they expire to have a look to make sure that there is the cost benefit. However, I do want to say that, in accordance with the policy, we undergo lease versus own analysis proposed on new lease contracts with terms of over 10 years. Currently we own 28 percent, and we lease 72 percent of our general office space, which is influenced by a number of things: location, local market conditions, operational needs, assessment, and also availability of capital. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
