Evidence of meeting #47 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 projects.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. If there's time, I'll be sharing it with my colleague.
I note that in your opening comments you suggested that it would be challenging for parliamentarians to monitor the $12 billion in infrastructure spending, given that it is being allocated over two years and delivered by 30-plus departments and agencies. I'm wondering if you could comment on whether this is a different model than existed prior to this Parliament, where the money is going to be disbursed over a long period of time and throughout a number of departments.
12:50 p.m.
Senior Director, Costing and Program Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Is it a different model? I don't think so. For the infrastructure components, especially that being delivered by Infrastructure Canada, no, it's pretty much the same. What you're seeing in this budget, from the departmental point of view, is a lot of capital asset refurbishment and replacement money being deemed as part of the infrastructure plan. There are a lot of ongoing projects—certainly with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, such as the education and water programs—that have been around for a long time, and they've been classified this time around as part of an infrastructure program. I think that's where the difference lies. It's just how the programs are being presented this time around.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Okay. Does it make sense, then, that the Minister of Infrastructure would be reviewing all of that under his mandate as infrastructure?
12:50 p.m.
Senior Director, Costing and Program Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
The Minister of Infrastructure is responsible for his department, and if you're looking for somebody to review the whole program, yes, somebody might want to, but so far we've been asked by Parliament to provide that sort of update.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Right. I understand the role of the parliamentary budget officer and recognize that you provide that objective view of how money is currently being spent by the Government of Canada, and I'm wondering: I know that this report that we are looking at doesn't include the infrastructure bank. As you've noted, there are a lot of questions around how that's going to be structured.
Given the role that you play currently, and some of the observations you've made about the difficulty of following the money when there are different kinds of lending structures in place, what do you envision your mandate to be when it comes to monitoring the infrastructure bank, given the funding model that's being proposed?
12:50 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I'll just take 10 seconds and then I'll let Mostafa speak.
As you know, our mandate is under review by the government. The government indicated that they will review our mandate and provide more resources, not only in total but also in terms of costing and so on. Our mandate could change in that kind of direction.
I want to say something about infrastructure. We sometimes look at a large project. The Champlain Bridge is a good example of where we did an analysis of an infrastructure project by the federal government, to predict the revenue generated by that bridge if there were a toll on it. This is an indication, but it's a $4-billion project. We cannot do costing or analysis of the revenue generated by some small project of $200,000 in a small municipality.
Do you want to add something to that?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I would just clarify that in terms of our mandate, under our legislation we are not entitled to request information from crown corporations. If the bank is a crown corporation, we cannot request information from it and would not be under any obligation to provide information to us on its activity. We could provide an assessment, but we would have to do that based on the public information that exists.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Right, so then following the money, or even the risk, would be difficult.
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
It would be more difficult, certainly.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Earlier I did understand that the money that was not spent this year in the first phase of the project was not lost nor returned to the public treasury, but that it could be carried over to the second year of the project. However, the 0.2% projected growth in the GDP for the first year of this program was to be attributable to those investments.
Am I wrong to say that there is no chance that that target will be reached, given the real amounts that were invested during the first year?
12:55 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
As you can see in the table, the funds that were set aside, as we learned last week, are not necessarily included, but they are in fact taken into consideration. If the trend holds and if the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analyses are correct, GDP growth in 2016-2017 will not reach 0.2%, but rather 0.11%, which is where we are at now. We are a bit more optimistic for the future. This confirms our forecasts from last week, which were that the $830 million for Infrastructure Canada that were set aside for 2016-2017 will probably be reused later.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you.
This takes me to the second year of the program. There is no guarantee that we will recover in the second year what has not been saved in the first year simply because sums are being transferred.
No later than this morning, I spoke with some mayors of municipalities who said that when you miss a certain number of construction seasons, the actual effect is an increase in costs for the same infrastructure, because entrepreneurs have a great deal of choice.
Should the 0.4% target for the second year be increased, since there will be more money in the second year, or do I understand that this transfer of amounts to the second year will have no impact on GDP growth?
12:55 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Our presentation is somewhat more optimistic for the second year. That is why we said that we were going to track the money and ask for reports. When I mentioned reports, I was speaking about them in conjunction with other reports. Not only will we track the money for the infrastructure, but we will also update our fiscal and economic analysis regularly, and it will contain a section on the status of the infrastructure projects. So in theory, four times a year we expect to be presenting a report containing figures that will help parliamentarians monitor the development of the program.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all our witnesses. Our time is up.
Clearly, everyone has a lot of questions for you. No doubt, we'll ask you to come back at some point in the future.
Thank you very much to our witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Berthold, my vice-chair, for doing such a great job with the first part of the meeting.
The meeting is adjourned.