Government Operations Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Ehren Cory]

I'm sorry. I'm not sure I understand the question.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

How many former McKinsey clients got funding from the Infrastructure Bank?

[Ehren Cory]

I don't know. I don't know the full list of McKinsey clients, but we've lent money to, as I say, governments of all levels and private sector companies.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Are you aware of former McKinsey clients that got money from the Infrastructure Bank?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Give a brief answer, please.

[Ehren Cory]

Not to my knowledge. No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's your time.

[Ehren Cory]

I don't have enough visibility of who their clients are to answer the question with—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid our time is up, Mr. Cory.

We'll go to Ms. Thompson for two and half minutes, please.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Very quickly, Mr. Cory, could you speak to the average timeline for an infrastructure project? From the moment it touches your desk or is within your department, what's the timeline to completion?

[Ehren Cory]

Thanks for the question.

Typically, an infrastructure project has a timeline somewhere in the range of five years. That's going quite quickly. They also last, I should say, for 50 to 100 years. These are long-term investments we're making in our country. However, an infrastructure project generally has a year to 18 months of design and engineering work to figure out the project. It then has, often, 12 to 24 months of procurement to hire a short list of construction firms to build it, and then it's somewhere within three or four years, usually, to build it. Typically, you would expect to see that timeline for a large-scale infrastructure project.

Some of our projects are smaller. We're working with indigenous communities on renewal projects on a wastewater treatment plant. Those projects might be more like 24 months. They're faster.

The good news is that the reason we're getting involved in some of these projects is that there have been years of work leading up to this point. They've done the detailed engineering, but they're stuck and they're looking for help. Those ones can go a bit more quickly. However, that's the general timeline we are talking about.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Could you also speak briefly, because I know I am quickly running out of time, on how the Infrastructure Bank protects against conflicts of interest? What do those processes look like?

[Ehren Cory]

Absolutely.

We have a conflict of interest policy. It's quite rigorous. For every investment we make, we have an independent board of directors who bring expertise from the private sector from across the country. They declare any conflicts, and our employees are held to a very strict code of conduct.

We are, of course, lending money to the infrastructure owners, such as the City of Mississauga the Province of Alberta or the renewable power developer, so we're not directly building or contracting for the infrastructure. We are lending them money. We're very careful to document any potential real or perceived conflict of interest, and we keep a rigorous record of those.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

If there's time, could you speak to the contribution, if any, that McKinsey made in the formation of the institute? Indeed, was that part of the Liberals' 2015 platform?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Do it in about a five-second answer, please.

[Ehren Cory]

My understanding is that the early work helped set up the investment framework and the risk management practices of the CIB for the first few years. I think that was helpful. Of course, five years in, we've evolved from those quite a bit, and in my time, we have revised them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mrs. Thompson, thanks very much.

Colleagues, I apologize. There's one last point of business.

On the Governor General studies, in the way we did the motions, we actually ended up with two separate studies. With the committee's approval, to help the analysts, we'll combine the two studies, and then all the testimony we've heard will become part of the one study. The first one, expenditures related to travel by the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General, will become part of the travel expenditures study. If we all agree, it will make the lives of our analysts easier.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Unless anyone has anything else, we will adjourn.

The meeting is adjourned.