Thank you for the really good question.
Monetization is a really simple concept. As individuals we use it almost every day. When we're going to buy a house we don't usually have the money on hand to buy it. What we do is take out a mortgage that is based on our ability to service that mortgage, which is usually our salaries and any other income we make. In the simplest form, that's monetization.
Right now the problem is that it's the pay-as-you-go system that's in place with the federal government for infrastructure within indigenous communities. Whatever is in the budget, you'll pay for the infrastructure for that amount.
If we look at the overall infrastructure gap, we see that budget is about $2 billion. Not all of it goes to new infrastructure; it goes to repairs of existing infrastructure, especially in this age of COVID. We're going to need to improve the ventilation in our public buildings and our schools. That will probably take some priority.
At $2 billion a year, it's just not going to close it—it's just not. We need to be able to leverage a stream of revenue either from this $2 billion budget or from a new budget amount, and leverage that over it. For example, if we took $1 billion of this $2 billion and dedicated that to infrastructure, the FNFA, based on our ability to access capital and our credit ratings, can probably get about $25 billion. Just think about that. That's the power of leveraging; that's the power of monetization.
It's the same thing with the diesel generators. There are 300 communities in Canada that are on diesel, and it's not all indigenous communities, but there are many indigenous communities that are. The cost to do that, as I mentioned, could be offset with the savings in the purchase of diesel and transportation to implement greener energy-type projects that will be sustainable in our communities.
I'll ask Mr. Berna to add a little bit more to that, because he has been working on this file.
Steve.