Finance committee  As we weren't members of the bank, and as we're still not officially a member of the bank, we didn't have a voice in those projects. We did not provide our advice to the bank in terms of voting because we were not members. We're still not members.

Finance committee  I think those are interesting project examples, because those are projects where the AIIB is co-investing with other multilateral development banks. For example, the natural gas project in Bangladesh is a project that's being jointly done with the Asian Development Bank. The project in Egypt, the solar one—I assume that's the one you're referring to—is being done jointly with the World Bank's IFC, which is the private sector window of the World Bank, and some of the other projects as well.

Finance committee  In terms of the board seat, again if and when we do become a member, in the constituency that we would likely be joining, that would make us the largest shareholder in that constituency. There would be a very good likelihood that we would be taking that seat at the table or it would be alternated with the other largest shareholder in that constituency.

Finance committee  Potentially.

Finance committee  Yes. They'd be able to bring projects forward to the bank for consideration.

Finance committee  That's correct. Perhaps I could take a few minutes to describe the project process, if that would be helpful for members.

Finance committee  Yes, the project process, as it relates to Canada, is that, when a project is presented, the bank itself will do an assessment against all of the safeguards, including human rights safeguards. That project is then presented to members of the bank. In Canada, as part of our project assessment, we would do our own review of those pieces.

Finance committee  Correct. You can vote against the project. You can abstain, and then as always in international multilateral forums, we work with partners to try to influence in terms of Canadians' interest.

Finance committee  Absolutely. I think indicative of that is that the funding source is from the international assistance envelope, which is the portion of funding that the federal government sets aside for artificial development assistance. Most of the funding provided to the AIIB would be counted as official development assistance in terms of how it's reported through the OECD DAC.

Finance committee  I'm comfortable to provide my assessment now, but I'm not at this point able to define for the Government of Canada our like-minded partners internationally.

Finance committee  That would of course be our G7 counterparts. We have of course France, Germany, and the U.K. Many of the G20 we would also identify as our like-minded partners, including Australia. We can give you a full list of the membership.

Finance committee  I'll identify partners that in my capacity I would identify as like-minded, but I think that given that this is a public record we may want to review the statement after that as well, because there could be potential foreign policy implications for the assessments that I'm about to provide, Mr.

Finance committee  I can define our assessment of like-minded partners for interests in this bank, but again, I do not have the capacity to provide like-minded partners in a foreign policy context for the Government of Canada.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  In this case, I would put on that list: Germany, Korea, Australia, France, the U.K., Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, Hong Kong, Israel, Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, Norway, Austria, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, and then there's a series of other countries as well that are G20 partners.