Evidence of meeting #26 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was investing.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
Yes.
On our funding table, you will see each legacy program that is part of the investing in Canada plan, and you can see on there the amount of money that's been committed, how many projects, as well as the reimbursements. As well, on our horizontal table, there are links to the detailed information within those particular programs that would provide results information.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
Further, Deputy Minister, what has the federal government taken away from this process of receiving and adapting to the recommendations made by the Auditor General's office? How will it be proactive when developing similar initiatives in the future?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
I think the importance of governance, of coordination and of data integrity in sharing data from different systems are all important lessons learned, and they are certainly being shared with my colleagues for other such initiatives. We have the Treasury Board Secretariat here as well as the Privy Council Office that we work very closely with on these types of horizontal initiatives.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
I believe you alluded to this next bit, but there was such a focus in this whole report about delays in spending the allocated funding. Could you elaborate a little bit more on some of the critical reasons—I know it's very diverse and there are a number of different departments—for why there are holdups in getting the spending done and out the door?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
For infrastructure programming, as I mentioned a little bit in a previous question, first of all, you have to get the authority and you have to launch a program. I'll give the example of ours with our investing in Canada infrastructure program working with provinces and territories. We need signed agreements. They need programs to cost-share with us, so they have to develop those programs. Then they need to do intake processes to get the applications. They need to prioritize which projects, and then send them to us. Then proponents, which are often municipalities, need to plan, develop and implement the particular project and then send invoices after progress has been made. All of that takes time.
In infrastructure, often the early years are really about planning and design, and the heavy builds come in later on in the project. For all of that to happen, in the early years we expect less, and then, as it's coming into the later years of this particular plan but also the program itself, more builds come. That said, when we commit to a particular project that is going to be completed over a particular period of time, if there are delays within a particular proponent, it's really important for us to be able to move the money forward so it doesn't lapse and go back to the consolidated revenue fund. It gets moved forward based on forecasts from provinces and territories so that we have the money available to abide by the commitments we have made.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thanks for that very fulsome answer.
I'm sure there is a great range, but can you just give us some idea of the range and how long it can take with all this initial front-end work that I would deem administrative processes? Before you get to the spending and getting the money out the door, it sounds like it can be years sometimes.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
It can vary. It's normally within months within a fiscal year, but following a budget, there is generally a memorandum to cabinet process. There is the Treasury Board submission process. There's a program design and launch process, and then, depending on the type of infrastructure program you are managing, there's how much time it will take proponents to apply and go through the due diligence for approval. It will vary significantly depending on the program, but the expenditure management process from budget to launch will also vary depending on the complexity of the program.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
I'm afraid that is all the time.
Thank you, everyone.
I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing today and for taking the time out of your busy day. June is a particularly busy month here, so I will excuse the witnesses. Thank you again for joining us today.
I'm now going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes while we go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]