First and foremost, as you know, the announcement was made, but the terms and conditions around the way in which the fund will operate have yet to be finalized, so it's a little premature to comment on the substance of that. What I will say is that, again, experience in the public transit area in Canada has been very strong and very positive, so if you add an additional billion dollars a year into the mix, that can only make a significant contribution.
Again, it's leveraging. I'm sure that when Mr. McBride was here, he would have pointed out that his $1.25-billion fund really leverages about $6 billion to $6.5 billion of activity around the country. The same will be the case for this $1-billion transit fund. It could be a lot more, because we know that urban transit is probably every major municipality's biggest concern, and those projects are not inexpensive. The more money you can put into urban transit, the better. But what we do know is that the private sector and the private financing in particular are very actively interested in those projects and have invested substantially, including the pension funds. Again, Ms. Young will know that in the case of the Canada Line, for instance, the Caisse de dépôt out of Quebec was a major investor in that particular project.
There is a lot of private capital available in the country that is hunting for good projects. Urban transit projects are very good projects. I think you'll see that this additional billion dollars in the mix will make a significant difference over the long term.