Evidence of meeting #54 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bridge.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
It is already done, Mr. Aubin. Based on the information I have, our department has already responded.
Mr. Lévesque, please clarify that.
Louis Lévesque Deputy Minister, Department of Transport
The Parliamentary Budget Officer received a response to his information request from the department on October 26.
Deputy Minister, Department of Transport
We provided the information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Conservative
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ministers, first please allow me to greet your new deputy minister and your new associate deputy minister. These are people of very high integrity who have served their country very well. I am pleased to see that they are with you. This will give you more help and I imagine it will be good for the future.
I have a few questions about infrastructure. We often talk about transportation, but infrastructure is in a way its poor cousin; so I would like us to talk mainly about that today.
The money allocated to infrastructure funding has not all been spent. However, you are requesting supplementary funding. Why has that money, some $130 million, not been spent? Why request supplementary funding when you are unable to spend the money already available to you?
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you for the question on infrastructure, sir. I know you introduced the former government to the principle of transferring the gasoline excise tax. We made it permanent, and now every city in the country can forecast how much money it will have several years in advance, since it is over five years,.
You know the process well; now it is the law. You also know that our process is to pay when we receive invoices. You are also aware that the only province where we cannot go directly to the cities is Quebec. In Quebec, we absolutely have to go through the province.
At Infrastructure Canada, we disburse the money when we receive the invoices. Of course, we manage available funds in a balanced manner year over year. However, for projects that have been approved, and even completed, we have occasionally received invoices payable for those projects. We are often required to manage money on a year-over-year basis or to have supplementary budgets approved depending on the period in which the invoices have been sent to us. We often do not receive the invoices as quickly as we would like.
I am going to ask Ms. Lemay—
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
So you are telling me you pay even if you have not received the invoices.
November 29th, 2012 / 11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
That is not what I said. I said there were estimates.
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
I will let you finish the answer, Mr. Lévesque.
Deputy Minister, Department of Transport
Generally speaking, the payments made are in the nature of transfer payments. For the federal government's accounting purposes, we depend on the speed with which our partners perform the work and bill us for it. In many cases, first, the work takes longer than expected and, second, partners take more time to submit the necessary documentation to justify the federal government's payments.
This almost customarily requires reallocations, that is to say when budgets provided for previous years must be carried forward to subsequent years. Budgets thus expire during the previous year and we must subsequently request new budgets or supplementary funding.
Ultimately this essentially corresponds to the same funding that was initially allocated; it is simply reallocated to a subsequent period.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
That is fine.
Minister, I want to talk to you about the Champlain Bridge. I am one of those people who still believes there is a safety problem, and I am not playing politics with this. There is a problem regarding the safety of the Champlain Bridge, and work on the new bridge must be stepped up.
However, I am a bit troubled about land decontamination. You are conducting the environmental assessment, which will be finished in 2014, as you said. I have a question. You have to know Montreal to know that there may be some surprises. In the event your assessment turns up a worst-case scenario, do you have the necessary funding to deal with it? Will you need supplementary funding? Have you set aside a specific budget for that? For the moment, we are just talking about an assessment, but this could require supplementary funding.
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you for the question.
The bridge project is currently on schedule. Our timeline is being respected. In June, we said we would conduct the environmental assessment over 18 months. We started the process in January, but we issued the contract in June. Everything will be on schedule. As for being on budget, we will see about that at the end of the project. It is still too early in the process of putting the new bridge in place. However, we are on schedule for the environmental assessment.
Liberal
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
I am getting to the point.
I know you are very familiar with the beautiful Montreal region, are you not, Mr. Coderre?
Conservative
Denis Lebel Conservative Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
I know, and there can be no doubt about that.
However, you know that four partners are involved in this sector that we are talking about. We are in talks with certain individuals and some budgets have been set aside, but it is too soon to tell you about that. However, we are well aware of the importance of the issue. We are working with our partners in the area and we are determining how this will work.
Things are going well, but it is impossible for me to confirm for you at this point whether the funding set aside can cover everything we have to do. I am not saying that will not be the case, but simply that it is too soon to give you an answer.
