Transport Committee on May 5th, 2015

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

From 2013 forward. I'm not looking beyond that but just since the new 10-year.... Who applied and how—

[Jeff Moore]

How much they received...?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

It's how much they asked for, how much they got, and what was the total value of each of the projects. This is for federal, provincial, territorial, and community-based projects. Obviously all four types are involved in that.

[Jeff Moore]

And if it were a P3.... I understand.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

And if it were a P3, exactly.

Your reference to private being available, private companies being eligible during the stimulus period, I did some research in my own riding and discovered that a meat packing plant got stimulus money. Is that what you're referring to? They got $2 million. Only $5 million was spent in the riding, and $2 million went to a meat packing plant to improve their equipment. Did Infrastructure Canada spend that money?

[Jeff Moore]

Probably not. I can only assume that maybe it was Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or maybe the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

It was stimulus spending. That's how it was—

[An hon. member]

How big was the sign?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

That's a really good question.

The remaining $3 million that was spent in the riding was the City of Toronto's water main replacement project, so it was a big project that was divided up; $3 million was available to my riding.

Your comment about encouraging projects to come forward. Is that like the $600 million that was put forward for the extension of the Scarborough subway that came out of the blue? Suddenly there was $600 million. There was an announcement before. The province wasn't asking for it, the city was, and a fight was going on between the province and the city over what kind of funding and what kind of project was going to go forward.

The city then got an announcement of $600 million, which we understand is still floating in a budget somewhere. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about when you say you encourage projects to come forward?

[Jeff Moore]

Well, we always encourage projects to come forward, and that's the dynamic that we have with provinces and territories. We encourage them to bring forward their priority projects as quickly as possible so we can start assessing them and start making funding commitments.

As I said, we basically work at the speed of the provinces and territories, but we do engage with them on a fairly regular basis, and always with the view of bringing forward projects that we believe will be eligible under our programs.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

I'll come back to my last question in my last round, the electrification of the GO Transit system, and in particular the air-rail link, which was partly a federal infrastructure project way back when. It has now morphed into a $1.5-billion project, and thus far, as far as I can tell, there's been no specific request for electrification from the province for that particular project. You mentioned SmartTrack, and I'm not talking about SmartTrack. I'm talking about the fact that we're going to be the only city on the planet that has a diesel train to its airport. Has there been no request at all from the province for that?

[Jeff Moore]

In terms of the air link, my understanding was that this was a project supported by Transport Canada, so you'd have to have some conversations with them about that.

In terms of the transit project you're referring to, again we haven't seen the project in its entirety come in. We're still waiting for the municipality, provinces, and territories to determine what, if anything, they want to do about the regional express rail, the electrification of the GO rails, as well as the SmartTrack project itself. It's all a little bit up in the air, I think, in terms of what exactly is going to come forward, and which door it's going to come forward through as well. Is it going to come through the Infrastructure Canada door, the PPP Canada door, or the public transit fund door, which is also going to be administered by PPP Canada?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. Your time has expired, Mr. Sullivan.

Mr. Komarnicki, you have five minutes.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

One point I want to carry on that was asked earlier by Mr. Braid is that when you have a new program coming out and you're looking at the estimates of what will be spent in a particular year, or the amount of spending, it's fair to say that you have to put that in context or perspective. That's simply because there's an application process that has to take place and there has to be some kind of a vetting process to accept a particular project. There must be a tendering process where you actually get contractors to bid on the project, and then there must be some work completed before you start getting invoices and payments are actually paid.

What's generally the lag time? What do you expect in terms of when a commitment is made in terms of how it compares to payments actually flowing across, when you're looking at how much is spent in a particular year? What's the context of all of that? Could you maybe deal with that for me?

[Jeff Moore]

It all depends on the size and complexity of the project in terms of how long it takes to get from the initial application phase up to the point where we have a negotiated contribution in place with the recipient. But even after you have an agreement signed, as you said, we have to wait for the work to start, invoices to come in, and then invoices get paid. We're talking quite a few months, I would think, before you actually see actual public funds being spent or being transferred from us to the recipient of a project.

What this means is that when we do have a new program that comes into being, you're usually going to see a ramp-up in terms of funding.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

If you were to take the first year, for example, you wouldn't expect the spending to be as substantial as you might in the second year of the program because there needs to be a bit of uptake time before public dollars are actually spent.

[Jeff Moore]

Correct, and there has to be some education as well. People have to understand the program and how it works, what the criteria are. That takes a bit of time as well before they actually start applying under the program.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

When you're looking at whether or not you're meeting a particular infrastructure deficit, if you want to call it that, it's not how much you've spent in the first year of the program, so much as how much is committed in a block of time.

[Jeff Moore]

Yes, it's over an extended period of time. That's correct.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

The other aspect I was going to talk to you about is that there are two parts of the program. There is the national aspect of the program, where you say there is an optimum level of investment needed to support a competitive and resilient economy. Of course, you will probably never get the optimum, but you will get a set amount and then you have to decide among the applicants what would be the optimum. Obviously, it is something that Infrastructure Canada needs to make decisions on.

When you are dealing with the provincial or regional aspect, the same kinds of principles can apply, but when you are dealing with local projects or core infrastructure projects, would you agree with me that there are different kinds of considerations?

[Jeff Moore]

In terms of...?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I mean in terms of making the award for a particular project or not.

[Jeff Moore]

There are multiple considerations that go into that. I think it would be important to note that the national infrastructure component is merit-based. Projects come in, and we deal with them one at a time. Under the current situation, it is not a competitive process where we have a start date, in terms of an intake process, and an end date. We look at the merits of the project that comes in as it stands.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I noticed the municipalities are really keen on the gas tax fund because they are able to decide what their local priority is.

In a sense, the gas tax fund does actually address the local infrastructure needs and has perhaps different considerations than you might have for the regional program, where you look more at the economic side of things and the resilience of the economy to ensure that it can prosper, and so on.

[Jeff Moore]

It's like a spectrum.

The gas tax fund starts at the local level, and we look at local priorities based on their process. We work our way up to the small communities fund, which is again local in nature. Then there is the provincial and territorial infrastructure component, which is more regionally based and in some situations may be national. Then we have the national infrastructure component, which looks at national priorities and how it achieves national economic priorities.

There is a broad spectrum of the types of projects we can support, depending on the nature of the wicket that you can go through within the new building Canada plan. Does that answer your question?