Evidence of meeting #4 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 43rd 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.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
That's not true. We said that we were going to defer—
February 27th, 2020 / 4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
We said that we were going to defer investments, we never said that we would cut them. You keep repeating the same thing.
In any case, I'm not the one answering questions, you are.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
So what I'm hearing, since you don't want to answer my question, is a confirmation on your part that the Liberal government's investment plans have no effect on gross domestic product growth in Canada.
Thank you.
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
Do I have any time left? Yes?
I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with some of the words that were used.
Conservative
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
In that case, there's no doubt. When we measure our economic growth, we've created over a million jobs.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
How many of those are directly linked to infrastructure investments?
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
It's what the Parliamentary Budget Officer claims. What we want to know are the impacts of infrastructure investments.
Did the money that the federal government invest really go to infrastructure projects?
Wherever I went during your first term, people told me they weren't seeing projects being carried out. So there hasn't been as much job creation as you're suggesting. It is completely untrue to say that a million jobs have been created because of an infrastructure plan.
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
Let me clarify one thing. The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that the delays and the inability to get projects were because we have a program—you are from Quebec—and we have to work with the provinces. We are still waiting for proposals from the provinces. If we don't get requests from them, how can we make announcements?
We must not make announcements without the provinces. I think you agree with that.
Is that your position?
Conservative
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister, and welcome to Ms. Gillis as well.
Minister, do we in government, and I mean all orders of government—federal, provincial, municipal or indigenous groups—have a clear understanding of this country's infrastructure needs? I know that access today can be a challenge sometimes, especially at the municipal level, where resources are scarce, but also for indigenous governments and others.
Does this concern you, and do we have adequate information to fully understand the country's infrastructure needs and priorities?
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
That's a very good question. It actually responds to the previous member's question, so he may be interested.
Clearly we've indicated the areas of priority, whether in green infrastructure, in public transit or rural and northern, but I think we do need to better understand our infrastructure investments.
I was in the U.K. They have a national infrastructure assessment that sets out very clearly to 2050 what the long-term goals are. I agree that to get the maximum benefit for the dollars.... Infrastructure investment is the largest driver of GDP. It is a huge opportunity, with a declining population. Municipalities obviously want public transit, and so do we, but we need to be making sure we're getting the long-term benefits and are able to quantify them.
We absolutely have a sense of all the projects we've done and can see the impacts in terms of jobs, but I think we need to be mapping out now where we want to be in 2050, as we make these historical investments, which we know are creating jobs.
We know we're growing the economy and we know we're improving lives. This all helps to transition us to a cleaner future, but I think we can do a better job of mapping it out by learning best practices from other countries. The U.K. has done it, Australia has done it, New Zealand has done it.
We have some road maps already. We have the economic adviser's report to the finance minister; we have the pan-Canadian framework on climate change; we have the national housing strategy. I think, though, that we have to be very focused on outcomes.
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
Thank you, Minister.
You mentioned the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which I understand was immensely popular and in fact was oversubscribed when it was rolled out in 2017. It's a 10-year program with $2 billion in funding, but it's already pretty much fully used up. Will there be another opportunity for communities to propose projects? I've heard concerns, from smaller communities especially, that the $20-million project threshold shut out a lot of excellent but low-cost projects. Can we expect to see this disaster mitigation and adaptation fund continue?
To add to that, in my riding, which is a very coastal riding, we've seen immense damages to infrastructure caused by this winter's storms. These communities are looking for help and looking to this kind of fund.
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
You're absolutely right. We're all seeing the impacts of climate change across the country, and it is creating huge costs. Costs have gone from $400 million to more than $1 billion per year—those are insured costs, not costs that aren't insured—and we need to be taking action.
The program has been hugely oversubscribed. The good news is that I have had a discussion with the finance minister. I know that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has talked about how incredibly important it is. To put it in dollar terms, every one dollar invested in adaptation is worth six dollars of return. You're going to pay in some way, and it's better to pay up front to build resilience.
There's a huge opportunity. I've talked to folks, including many of you, I believe, and I think the threshold of $20 million is extremely high. There are smaller communities that have very good projects to help build resilience to deal with disaster mitigation. We're looking at how we can lower the threshold. How do we make the projects really work for communities on the ground?
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
Thank you very much, Minister.
I have one final question. I can't leave without asking you this one. Is it possible that you would comment on the proposal to work on a fixed link to the island of Newfoundland from Labrador? This is a recommendation submitted in a previous transport committee report last spring to the House of Commons and identified in your mandate letter.
Liberal
Catherine McKenna Liberal Ottawa Centre, ON
My mandate letter did include reference to a national infrastructure fund, which I think is incredibly important, and it included the fixed link. We will be having a look, doing a feasibility study to make sure that it makes economic sense and that it's going to have the return on the investment. I know there is a lot of interest in that.
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
I have one final comment in regard to the municipalities. I know there have been bilateral agreements signed by provinces with the federal government on infrastructure programs and so on. One of the questions I've always asked is why municipalities are never really given the opportunity to have some input into that agreement before it's officially signed. What I'm talking about specifically is how provinces sometimes alter the cost-shared ratios to meet their needs.
