Good morning. Thank you for inviting me here today to talk about the Auditor General's report on the investing in Canada plan.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that the land I am joining you from is the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
I'm pleased to be here with my colleagues from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Indigenous Services Canada, the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council Office.
We want to thank the Auditor General and her staff for their examination of the plan. We accept the Auditor General's recommendations.
Introduced in budgets 2016 and 2017, the investing in Canada plan was created to provide a comprehensive reporting of cross-government effort to deliver infrastructure to communities across Canada.
Infrastructure Canada has a dual role in the plan. The first of these is to deliver infrastructure funding. Infrastructure Canada is one of 21 departments and agencies responsible for administering the programming included in the plan. In our second role, Infrastructure Canada acts as the central hub for reporting on plan-wide data, while each of the 21 departments and agencies that report into the plan is accountable for the management of its programs.
This information gives Canadians a global perspective on how the plan is moving forward. For example, our website provides a full accounting of the $188 billion in funding delivered under the plan: how this funding has been allocated to programs, how much has been approved for specific projects and how much has been paid out to recipients. As a result of this horizontal reporting of the plan’s progress, I am able to say that federal departments and agencies have approved over $81 billion in funding under the plan—43% of the total, 40% of the way through the plan—associated with 67,000 projects, of which 91% have started.
Infrastructure Canada's horizontal results reporting role is set out in the requirements of the Treasury Board. However, we've created additional tools to enrich how we report to Canadians.
These tools include our online geo-map, which makes it possible to identify projects in specific regions and communities.
Also, in response to requests for information from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we've provided additional project-level information in a way that is as comprehensive and comparable as the source data allows.
It is important to note, however, that not all programs report the same kind of information in the same way. This is because programs have been set up with different requirements, reflecting their diverse policy goals. Some, like the gas tax fund, provide funding as an upfront grant. While funding under such programs is fully accounted for and their performance is audited, very little project-level information is requested of applicants, by design. Others, like the investing in Canada infrastructure program, are application based, permitting federal departments and agencies to collect detailed project-level information.
It is also true that programs operate through long-standing funding mechanisms, which predated the plan—what we call “legacy” programs. The reporting requirements of these programs were preserved when the plan was put in place. Changing them would have caused significant delays, introduced uncertainty for infrastructure investments and been counter to binding agreements. However, as these programs reflect considerable ongoing investments in infrastructure, they were included in the plan as is. Where possible, we have integrated the available data of these programs into the horizontal reporting under the plan.
I would like to underscore that this entire horizontal reporting framework sits on top of existing departmental requirements and accountabilities for individual programs.
Each of the 21 departments and agencies is individually responsible for their respective programs, including the program design, spending, oversight and reporting.
This is information available through each department's own reporting framework, which can be reviewed through such tools as departmental result reports, main estimates, public accounts and proactive disclosures on the open government portal. We have developed a number of tools to report to Canadians and have continued to evolve our reporting, but we know there's room for improvement.
In developing our management action plan, Infrastructure Canada is taking careful consideration of the Auditor General's finding and is working with our delivery partners to ensure that Canadians and parliamentarians have meaningful information about the infrastructure that is being built under the plan.
The Auditor General also noted that 20% of the funds for the first three years of the plan were re-profiled to later years. Five years into a 12-year plan, over 40% of the funds have been committed and, as of January 2021, $48 billion has flowed to recipients.
It is important to note that, for most infrastructure programs, federal spending is made as a reimbursement after the fact. This means that programs are rolled out, projects are started, construction begins and economic activity is spurred along, and federal dollars then are paid out. It is also critical to understand that infrastructure funding does not lapse but rather is re-profiled and carried forward to future years under the plan, so that it is available as infrastructure projects are built.
We appreciate the opportunity the Auditor General's work provides us to improve how we report on the investing in Canada plan.
I would be happy to answer your questions.