Thank you all for being here.
I want to start with a couple of comments. I think someone mentioned the conversation around infrastructure and the infrastructure bank.
I think the trouble has been when we're talking about the infrastructure bank and the types of projects, we're talking about unique projects. We're not talking about the sidewalks, a park, these types of smaller community infrastructure needs that most Canadians think about. So this confusion, or sometimes fearmongering, around privatization of all infrastructure in our communities is not what this is about. That's why our government has also committed to infrastructure funding in traditional forums as well.
Then the conversation happened, and examples were given of projects associated with P3s that probably didn't go very well.
I come from a municipal background, and I can tell you about completely government-funded projects that also went horribly wrong, that also had tenders that were over budget, construction delays, employees not paid, a municipality charged twice, illegal Chinese steel used, and unqualified workers. These examples exist currently, and the taxpayers are on the hook one way or the other. Court cases also happen. In my municipality we had to go after people who didn't complete projects as they were supposed to.
The problem I tend to have is this. Where is the correlation that only bad projects can happen or bad contractors can only exist in a P3-type system? Unfortunately, we can get bad contractors with full government funding or in private partnerships.
That's my comment. I'm sure some may want to speak to that. Because I have limited time, I wanted to throw that out there and then get to a question with regard to the infrastructure gap that I'm somewhat interested in.
We're not talking about every sidewalk, every park, or every municipal need. How do you determine the gap when sometimes these projects...? We've heard a lot about transit, for example. Sometimes there are needs municipalities don't necessarily know they have, because they're too big to even contemplate when we would do 5-, 10-, or 15-year budgets. It's something you'd like to have, but you have to fix the local pool, repair a sidewalk, or resurface a road. How do we come up with that gap when these types of transformational projects...? Some municipalities may not even know what they need or where to begin to identify it.