I'm happy to start on that question and then go to Mr. Duguay if there's anything he'd like to add.
As you say, the CIB makes investments in projects. What that means is that when we make a loan to a project, it is not an expense of the Government of Canada. It does not show up, as you see, in the public accounts, as that's the amount that's showing there. One of your colleagues asked the question about the revenue, the $2.8 billion in revenues that we were showing from government appropriations. That reflects the flow of funds from the Government of Canada to the CIB to fund those loans, which are then lent out with interest to various projects across the country.
As those projects proceed through construction, they start generating revenues and operations, whether that is the cost of the wind turbine charges to the grid, the fees that users of a port pay or the fare that someone pays when they tap onto a transit system. We then use those revenues to repay our loan over time.
Over the life cycle of the portfolio, we anticipate getting more money back from those investments than we put out in the first place. What that allows us to do is cover our operating costs and create a flywheel of investment that comes from reinvesting those proceeds over time.
To date, we've now seen over $600 million flow back from our initial wave of investments to the CIB, which we've been using to offset the requirements for incremental capital from the shareholder. That's what allows us to be a self-sustaining institution that funds $3 billion or $4 billion a year in new infrastructure across the country.