Finance committee  Just to clarify, if Canada has a 1% shareholding, then essentially 1% of all projects would be funded with resources that were provided, for instance, by Canada. I think the key point here, as Dr. Giles has mentioned, is that we've provided share capital to the bank. The bank then takes that share capital and uses it to leverage up on international capital markets through borrowing, which it then uses to provide project financing.

Finance committee  Sure. The Government of Canada holds equity investments through multilateral development banks that have programs to do these. We're just a limited partner in those funds.

Finance committee  To be honest, we'd have to look into that and compare across the entire portfolio. Essentially, what this program is doing is recognizing that there are times when there are different financing vehicles that are the most appropriate to achieve certain objectives. In the case of these programs, equity happens to be a component of that.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  There will. With a typical project, the country may choose to come forward and say they would prefer to do it through their state-owned enterprise. That's their sovereign right. The bank can certainly propose alternative ways of financing it, but that would then get taken to the board for discussion.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  If we can come back to the Inter-American Development Bank example, we were a founding member of the bank itself, but the bank then went on to create a private sector focused wing of the bank that was capitalized differently. They were a one-bank group but two separate organizations.

Finance committee  The answer was that there is no track record to make an assessment on that. What is clear is that the bank has certainly encouraged private participation in infrastructure projects throughout Asia, but with a P3 approach, not necessarily a privatization approach. We would need a track record to be able to ascertain that.

Finance committee  They would have to be members of the bank. For instance, North Korea is not a member of the bank, so they would not have access to those funds.

Finance committee  Singapore is a member, and they would in theory be able to come forward. Obviously, we have a very short track record to look at, but the emphasis has been on promoting sustainable development, as you mentioned, so the focus has been geared more towards the middle- and lower-income countries.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Right. It's true that we have 1% of the vote, but I think it's important to understand also that, in a context like this, there's a lot that shareholders can do before projects even come to the board for a vote. We absolutely would do our own scrutiny of each project, and if we see concerns, we would want to bring those forward to the bank and to bank management, before they even come forward for a vote, in the hope that we can address them before they reach the table.

Finance committee  Anchela, do you want to take this?

Finance committee  The nuance is that, yes, the bank will, hopefully, turn a profit. Again, the history of other multilateral development banks is that they quite regularly turn a profit every year. They have a positive net income. The difference, as my colleague has mentioned, is that it hasn't been the norm to distribute these profits as dividends, but rather to keep them within the bank as retained earnings to allow the bank to have additional financial capacity to do more of what it's doing.

Finance committee  Technically, we're purchasing an asset, but we fully expense it based on the expectation that.... The public sector accounting rules require this to be treated as a concessionary investment.