I am. It's my amendment.
After having heard the witnesses and the minister speak to this, I'm unsatisfied that this is the right thing to do with Canadian taxpayer money. I'm proposing this amendment to remove those five lines from the bill.
My concerns are that we are rushing into this. We will be financing infrastructure projects overseas while we know we have a $2-billion deficit here in infrastructure spending between what the government intended to do and actually has done. Fewer than 30 projects out of 174 have been completed in Alberta. There are other concerns from international experts regarding the purpose of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. I took the time to read what China's President Xi Jinping has said on it. He distinctly connects the one belt, one road initiative with the AIIB. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is supposed to further the interests of China's foreign policy, and I don't really see why Canada should be financing that.
The second part is that witnesses before the committee said that a human rights and environmental review had been done of each and every single project. If they had done that, they would know that, actually, there's been a total lack of transparency, because that documentation is not available online. Through this project and future loan guarantees, so as the loans are paid out, if we proceed with paying our share into it, buying our voting share, we would be financing pipeline projects and Asia would be receiving loan money indirectly from the Canadian taxpayer. I think fundamentally that's wrong. We can't be doing such things when seemingly the Canadian government is opposed to supporting energy jobs in Canada while we're making it easier for them to be financed overseas. I think that's wrong. President Xi Jinping has said this furthers China's foreign policy interests.
There's one other part. Witnesses said repeatedly that this is an opportunity for Canadian construction companies to bid on these projects. They tried to make the connection that these Canadian companies might receive these funds in the future. That's also incorrect. Canadian companies could already bid on the projects. I have taken the time to look at international reviews of these infrastructure projects that have been financed by this bank, and with regard to international relations with the Asia Pacific, Jeffrey D. Wilson from the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University points out that in the majority of the contracts, preference is given to Chinese construction contractors in AIIB-funded projects. This is a gentleman who took the time to review the procurement and bidding process and found that Chinese contractors in fact do get preference when bidding. I just don't see the wisdom in spending $375 million U.S. at this point.
I'd like this amendment to pass so we don't waste taxpayer money.