Transport Committee on June 16th, 2020

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, I'd like to be there too, but we have to respect the measures in place to protect us.

We have already presented our plan to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. This plan includes more than 33,000 detailed projects. The total also includes some 10,000 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, housing-related projects, and about 12,000 municipal projects funded by the federal Gas Tax Fund.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Minister, for three years the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that only half of the money promised under the Liberal plan has actually been invested.

In 2018, he was told the Liberals had no plan. In 2019, the Parliamentary Budget Officer asked for the list of 53,000 projects and was told that there was no such list. It has only been a few days since the Parliamentary Budget Officer received a supplementary list of projects, including the famous projects related to the federal Gas Tax Fund. He was told that Infrastructure Canada did not have the project information from CMHC.

You yourself said on May 12 that the Liberal plan wasn't working.

You said that it is “an attempt to be smarter and more efficient”.

Recognizing the failure of the previous plan, how can you have voted against additional funding for the Auditor General, so that we could find out exactly where the money went?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

The only failure was the infrastructure project under the previous government, the Conservative Party. That is surprising, because we are transparent, whereas the former government was not.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

There have been three reports.

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

The former government did not provide information or funding to the Auditor General.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

That's not true.

I'm going to talk about another issue that shows the lack of transparency of the Liberal government.

In January 2019, Minister Carolyn Bennett signed an agreement with the Huron-Wendat Nation and Grand Chief Konrad Sioui, obliging the federal government to consult with the nation for any project on a territory about the size of half of Quebec. This agreement was signed in secret and was not revealed until December 2019, when municipalities received a letter from Grand Chief Konrad Sioui advising them of this obligation. The municipalities were never notified by the federal government or advised on this new approach. Dozens of projects under the Fonds pour l'infrastructure municipale d'eau, or FIMEAU, the municipal water infrastructure fund program, are currently stuck on the minister's desk because no consultation has taken place. Work was expected to begin soon.

Madam Minister, how many projects are stuck on your desk because of this unacceptable situation?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We take our obligations to indigenous peoples seriously. It's too bad the former government didn't do the same.

As I said in my introduction, we've implemented hundreds of projects.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

How many projects are currently stalled, Madam Minister? The municipalities did not know that they had to consult the Huron-Wendat Nation. The government did not advise them and did not show them how to do it.

How many projects can't be executed? I will give the example of the City of Lac-Mégantic, which is ready to award the contract. They have put out a call for tenders, but unfortunately they were told that nothing could be done.

How many projects are stalled because of this government's improvisation? We agree that there should be consultations, but the government should at least have notified the municipalities.

Why didn't you do that?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm going to talk about our infrastructure plan.

We work very closely with municipalities, provinces and territories. That's very important.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Minister, you're not answering my question.

My question is, how many projects are there?

At the moment there are municipalities and works that are on hold. This situation is problematic. The municipalities need money. We need to put Canadians to work. They will not be able to work because we do not know how to carry out the famous consultation.

What is your department's plan to have these projects go forward, not in the next few weeks, but in the next few days?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I know that my counterpart Minister Bennett is working very hard on this file.

I want to assure you that we are moving forward on projects that are in our infrastructure plan. In fact, I would say that in the member's municipality, we are moving forward with projects as well.

I can talk to you about these projects.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Yes, Minister McKenna.

If I tell you about the projects—

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

These projects are worth almost $240 million.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Minister McKenna, if you want, you can list 33,000 projects. You can take all the time that you need to do so.

However, this isn't the issue. Right now, some municipalities are waiting to carry out very important projects.

Minister McKenna, what will you do to ensure that these projects can be launched in the coming days?

The question is simple.

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I know that my counterpart is working very hard on these projects.

We have a duty to consult.

In recent months, 262 projects have been approved in Quebec. I'm working very closely with Minister Dubé.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

How many projects have stopped, Minister McKenna?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

Thank you, Minister.

Ms. McCrimmon.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you, Minister. It's very good to see you here today.

I know we've had some really good discussions about improving public transit here in Ottawa and right across the country, so I'm going to leave that one aside and ask a couple of other related questions.

First of all, my community is very active, very engaged. They want to see us expand access to active transportation in my riding.

Is there anything in the investing in Canada plan that would give us access to funds to be able to improve that?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Of course, that is a top priority for us—public transportation but also active transportation. In fact, there was a great announcement just this morning in Waterloo, where we're investing with the city and the province on active transportation and public transportation projects that are making a real difference.

We recognize, especially right now, that Canadians want to be able to get out, to get active and to do that in a safe way. That's why we have looked at additional flexibilities so that active transportation projects can be considered not only under the public transportation stream we invest in but also under the green infrastructure stream.

We're going to continue moving forward. I know how important it is to the member's community. I think there are real opportunities to make more investment, so I am looking forward to working directly with the member to make that happen, to improve lives, to reduce emissions, to reduce congestion and to get people out and active in healthy ways.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you for that, Minister.

You also said things about rural broadband. My riding is part suburban and part rural. The rural broadband is an issue that needs to be addressed.

How can we do that with this investing in Canada plan? We need to make it better, especially now with everyone trying to work from home. It has to be improved.

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I absolutely agree with the member. We need to be continuing to make investments in broadband across the country. I think we need to be accelerating investments.

The investing in Canada plan includes investments in broadband through our rural and northern stream. There are also investments made through ISED and through CRTC, and I think we recognize right now just how critical that is. It's no longer just a productivity issue for folks to have access to high-speed, affordable broadband. It's also an equity issue.

Many parents including me are home-schooling our children, and they need to have access to broadband. Folks who run businesses and who are now having to run businesses virtually need access to high-speed broadband. Now you can access doctors and health care services, but you need access to broadband.

This is something I'm absolutely committed to, and I know our government is looking at how we can accelerate these investments to ensure that everyone across the country has access to affordable, high-speed broadband as quickly as possible.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Minister. I appreciate that.

We are dealing with an immediate crisis, which is COVID, but there's another crisis on the horizon. My riding has suffered two floods and a tornado in the last three years.

How are we going to be able to make a difference in tackling climate change? Can that be part of this plan as well?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Absolutely. We have a disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which is intended to help support communities that are impacted by intensifying weather events related to climate change.

I remember working with the member sandbagging to help support residents who were going through floods in almost consecutive years. In between those years there was a tornado in your riding, so your residents know full well the impacts of climate change.

As for our disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, we've invested more than $1.7 billion for 59 large-scale infrastructure projects, helping to protect communities across the country from the threats of climate change and natural disasters like floods and wildfires. The Minister of Public Safety has also invested in these types of projects. We need to continue doing so, because we know the impacts of climate change are real and they're accelerating. We need to ensure that we have resilient communities across the country.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Minister. Those are words I want to hear.

We're trying really hard to work collaboratively. I'm in contact with my counterparts at the provincial level and at the municipal level. How do we do that better? How do we make it so that the work we're doing actually fits into the plans that both the provinces and, probably more importantly, the municipalities want to see happen?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you. That's a really great question. That was one of my priorities when I came in, to get projects approved quickly, working directly with provinces, territories and municipalities. I've worked very hard at that.

In the Province of Ontario, for example, I work extremely closely with the two ministers responsible for infrastructure and transportation. In fact, we have weekly calls where we talk about infrastructure. We also sometimes talk about the challenges of home-schooling our children.

We are moving forward on projects. We also demonstrated flexibility. We've taken the time. We recognize that we need to think about how we can be more flexible and respond to the priorities of municipalities, provinces and territories. We think that different orders of government that are potentially closer to Canadians should be setting their own priorities. We've listened to that. Also, we recognize that in the time of COVID there may be different challenges and different needs. We've worked very hard to show flexibility and to work directly with provinces, territories and municipalities because, at the end of the day, we are all here to improve the lives of Canadians.

I know full well, as do you, from all the door knocking we've all done, that people don't want to hear about fights between levels of government. They want to hear about investments that are going to improve lives.