There were two main questions that I understood.
On the first one, I would disagree that under user-pay models the individual is paying twice. If you look at what's happening with a piece of infrastructure, when you bring in a revenue-generating model, you're building a piece of infrastructure that might not have otherwise been built, or if it had been built, it would have less government money into building that infrastructure than it otherwise would. So to suggest that someone is paying twice for the same infrastructure, I think is a flawed expression.
The objective here is to attract private-sector financing into that particular model and, to the extent to which there is not public funding into that model, there may be a user pay that is attached to it, and that is what the private sector is bearing the risk on. They're basically incented to ensure that asset is built and used, and that revenue receives value for money into the project.
Really, we would disagree strongly that they are paying twice and, quite frankly, whether it's tolls, or tariffs, or user charges, many of our provinces, territories, and municipalities, which I engage with personally, have them in place now and are already contemplating more. This is an opportunity to use this and build even more infrastructure than we otherwise would, and I think that's an attractive concept, but it will be something that will need to be decided at the local level.
On the second point, far be it from me to refine the wise words of the Minister of Finance, or the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, but I can repeat what the minister did say, that there would be appropriate oversight of the crown and on the various projects, and that there will be room for an independent crown corporation to use its professional commercial abilities to structure a deal among many partners.
We call this a partnership model that includes not just the bank, or the Government of Canada through the bank, but also another order of government, as well as potential investors. It's quite clear: the objective would be that the bank would not be even searching to try to find financing for a project that was not already approved by one level of government. Our intent is that the discussions will come up through bilateral discussions between the province and the federal government. They would determine a list of their priority projects. The majority of those will be funded through the invest in Canada plan, through all those other envelopes.
The extent to which that partner says, “I think there's a revenue model they'd be willing to attach to that project, and would this be a candidate for the infrastructure bank?”... It's not obligatory to be funded by the bank. It goes on a pipeline list and then the bank deals with investors on a project that all governments are already aware is on the list—it's already there—and then at some point all the parties will need to come back as they start negotiating a deal. The debt investors have to go back to their credit committee. The equity investors will have to go back and make a decision. Whatever the municipality or province is, it will have to go back at some point. And the bank will have to go to its main shareholder and say, “We think we have a financing agreement on this asset; are we willing to go ahead?” Then the independent arm's-length bank goes ahead with all those parties and constructs a commercially very valid deal on that process.
In the partnership model there are partners doing the decision-making, and it won't be a surprise to anyone the projects that the bank is working on. It will be visible through the corporate plan tabled in Parliament, and they will be made available publicly by those provinces, which are saying, “Here are candidates”, because they'll be trying to sell it to investors, if they'd be interested in that project. It will be a very transparent process.