Evidence of meeting #44 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bank.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Okay, so all of the loans that they are covering, from the $35 billion that's being put in there, to any other private.... Anything that the federal government covers in loans is going to be included in the federal budget.
11:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Canada Infrastructure Bank Transition Office, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
It will be in the federal fiscal framework.
11:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Canada Infrastructure Bank Transition Office, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
The institution, the entity, will have a $35-billion balance sheet.
11:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Canada Infrastructure Bank Transition Office, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
As the minister said, it will have 20 billion dollars' worth of room to do liability asset matching, which will have no impact on the government's fiscal framework. But any loan or any pricing or change in the value of any of its instruments will be recorded in that $15 billion, and reflected in the Government of Canada accounts.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Okay. You're only talking about the $15 billion.
11:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Canada Infrastructure Bank Transition Office, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
The total amount.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Okay. Will whatever the amount of the loan that the federal government is covering, regardless of what that figure is, be included in the fiscal framework?
11:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Canada Infrastructure Bank Transition Office, Office of Infrastructure of Canada
The net position will be included in the fiscal framework. Traditionally, for any investment that the Government of Canada makes, there will be an accounting determination as to the extent to which that is a complete liability asset match or whether there's some form of support that can be priced, and that will be a liability or an obligation on the Government of Canada's books.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
11:15 a.m.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Please note that I will be sharing my time with my colleague Ken Hardie.
Good morning, Mr. Minister. Thank you for being with us this morning to answer our questions.
As the member for the riding of Alfred-Pellan, which is part of the City of Laval, in Quebec, and the greater Montreal area, I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity of your appearance here to stress that Montreal is the ideal city to welcome the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
Because of its high level of expertise, its universities and the presence of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which has recently established its CDPQ Infra subsidiary, Montreal has all the assets it needs to become the national centre of excellence in infrastructure and to get the bank up and running in no time.
Could you tell me where you’re at with the decision-making process in determining which city will host the Canada Infrastructure Bank?
11:15 a.m.
Liberal
Amarjeet Sohi Liberal Edmonton Mill Woods, AB
We are pleased that the infrastructure bank has created interest in various communities and that they want this institute to be located in their cities. We are pleased to see that. We are doing a very objective analysis on what the bank would require and what criteria we should have in making that decision. We are in the process of doing that currently. At this time, we have not made any decision on where the bank is going to be located.
11:15 a.m.
Liberal
Amarjeet Sohi Liberal Edmonton Mill Woods, AB
I don't have the timelines, but as you may recall from the fall economic statement, the legislation will be introduced as part of budget 2017, and once we do that, we will be looking at a location for the bank.
11:15 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you.
I will also put a pitch in for a very innovative and bright city called Surrey.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
There we go.
Minister Sohi, in the past we've seen situations where big programs have been announced with large dollars attached and then something happens and nothing happens. We get lapsed funding returning quietly to the federal treasury, which, in the past, has been used to claim balanced budgets.
Will the infrastructure bank actually prove to be a way to redirect named funding so that the funding actually stays in the stream for which it was intended, thus reducing or redirecting lapsed funding?
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Amarjeet Sohi Liberal Edmonton Mill Woods, AB
The $15 billion allocated from the $180-billion plan will remain in the bank as we look at projects. Every project is going to look different. For the other funding streams, when we took office, there was close to $900 million tied to projects for a number of years and this was sitting idle in the federal coffers. We worked very closely with the provinces, and I'm proud to tell you that the vast majority of that funding has been reassigned to different projects and that only $30 million was transferred to municipalities through the gas tax fund.
As you can appreciate, the infrastructure investments are long term. They take a number of years for the planning to happen, the design work to happen, and then for the construction to start on new projects. Money allocated in year one may not be spent in year one. It's kind of rolled over to year two and year three. That's how the plan works, but we are committed to those projects and the commitments we made will be honoured.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
It's been said that the money that's been allocated so far has been very slow in rolling out. I'm going to make an observation. You can simply confirm it's true or not. That is, normally the federal government's allocation is spent toward the end of the project's term, not necessarily at the beginning. If somebody is looking at the money that hasn't gone out but has been allocated, this is simply a function of how we actually end up making that contribution to the project.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Amarjeet Sohi Liberal Edmonton Mill Woods, AB
One change we have made is that we do not announce projects until we have approved the projects. This is different from the past practice. In the past, the projects would be announced, then we would receive the applications, then we would review them, and finally we would approve them. We have reversed that process.
You're absolutely right, though. Each province gives us their invoices at different times and each municipality follows a different schedule when they give us the invoices. Sometimes we wouldn't receive the invoices until the project was completed; sometimes we would receive them in the middle of the construction period. The money is there. The money is allocated and committed to that project. It's just a matter of when we actually transfer that money over to our project partners.
I don't know if the DM would want to elaborate on that.
