Absolutely. As I noted, any number of things can make it more complicated to deliver an infrastructure project than is envisioned at the point where the commitment of resources is made, usually by the federal government, province or municipality, including things like manpower and getting people to the site. That can cause delays. There can be supply chain issues. It's all the things we have heard that the private sector has been challenged with since the pandemic.
Things play out in projects as well. We see projects getting descoped. We see projects that are being substituted out. One of the things our framework agreements allow for is that we allocate money to provincial governments. Projects sometimes don't work out. They sometimes have projects that they decide they're not proceeding with. The resources stay with them, and then it takes them time to come back with additional projects.
I would agree with you. There's an intention. Most of these projects are done over a 10-year period of time, which I think is an acknowledgement of the fact that some planning challenges happen in the life of infrastructure projects. It's the same thing with the build Canada strong fund. It is a 10-year program precisely to allow for planning and execution to take place and for the resources to get done.
I would say, at the end of these programs, all of the money is spent. It's very rare to have lapses at the very end. I don't know if there are any. Michelle, who's been around a lot longer than I have, is saying no, so I think that's the real positive—and flexibility. If we were dogmatic and we said, “Sorry, but you told us you were going to spend it in this fiscal year and you didn't do it, so now we're taking the money back”, this would create a massive problem in infrastructure planning and our ability to have partnerships that are, as I mentioned, so critical.
The flexibility we have through being able to carry it forward—money re-profiled, money forward—is really central to our ability, working with our partners, to deliver major infrastructure projects.