When it comes to the infrastructure bank overall, while I agree that small and rural communities may not benefit as much as larger communities, I think the traditional mechanisms for funding infrastructure are still going to be there. I still think that's going to be a consideration, and the infrastructure bank really is just a small piece of that overall, so I don't think there's any real risk on that side of missing out on infrastructure investments that communities would otherwise get.
When it comes to the infrastructure bank, the questions that we ask specifically at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy are essentially with regard to the business case for the bank, whether or not infrastructure investment will occur in a way that is of most value to taxpayers. If you look at things like comparing the financing cost, the benefit of pulling in the private sector, and whether or not it will lead to additional investment overall and innovation within the infrastructure space, those are the fundamental questions. It's difficult to know, because Canada does not have a lot of experience with this overall.
The one thing we do know is that Canadian pension funds don't have a lot of experience with greenfield investment, and the required rate of return on greenfield investment is quite a bit higher than if you're buying an existing piece of infrastructure that has an existing revenue stream, because they're taking on the revenue risk. Some of the things that we've heard in talking to both the private sector and government officials, as well as just going to conferences and hearing about this, are what the return expectations are going to be and whether or not that's necessarily maximizing taxpayer value. I was at the Public Policy Forum recently, and that was one of the things that was talked about there.
Part of it is putting the cost on those who use it, which is something that is definitely much more efficient in an economic context, but there is also of the question of whether Canadians will continue to use that infrastructure, and whether will we benefit more broadly as an economy and a society from it. Those are open questions still.