Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Ropar and Mr. Casola, for coming today.
I always appreciate the interventions of my colleague Mr. Poilievre, as you know, Mr. Chair, but I wonder where his passion was, in terms of getting infrastructure built. I wonder where Stephen Harper's passion was, when it came to getting infrastructure built. We all know that hardly any infrastructure was built in Canada between 2006 and 2015, and perhaps if that passion and interest had been there, we wouldn't need the Canada Infrastructure Bank, but there is a dearth of infrastructure in Canada when it comes to large-scale projects. Our government has taken action on that, and that's why we moved in the direction that we did in 2017.
I have a related point. It's about timing.
In August 2019, Jim Leech—who, as I'm sure you know, is the former head of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which has a large amount of investment in infrastructure globally—said the following:
It took Teachers’ [the pension plan] more than three years to invest the amount CIB has already committed [in its first year, which is more than $3 billion]—and that was by purchasing complete projects, not building from scratch. Startup projects take considerably more due diligence and analysis. Putting money out the door is never a challenge—investing wisely for the betterment of Canadians takes time and talent.
Mr. Casola or Ms. Ropar, can you speak to the point I think Mr. Leech has made here, which is that transformational change takes time? When you introduce a new way of doing things, seeing the sort of transformational change that's intended does take time.
That's what I take from this comment, but I'm happy to hear what you think.