Transport Committee on March 9th, 2021

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I think we have two reports going on, and we have a rural infrastructure study coming up next. There are so many important issues across the country.

I think we have to be mindful of each and every member. As my colleague mentioned, this is already being studied in public accounts. Safety is paramount, so it is being studied. I don't know if we want to duplicate that, but I do know that the committee has a lot of important business as well to tackle.

I'm not sure if the Conservative Party wants to weigh in here, or the Bloc, because we do know there's a lot of stuff in the pipeline here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Fillmore.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

I appreciate all the thoughtful commentary here.

Again, I would hate for Mr. Bachrach's motion to fail. I think he would find that it could pass if we could remove the deadline and perhaps append his question to the appearance of the minister to discuss the main estimates.

With that amendment I think he would find support.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Fillmore.

Ms. Kusie, the floor is yours.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

From conversations with Mr. Bachrach since the beginning of my time as vice-chair of this committee, I know that rail safety has been of great importance to him. I feel that along with the study of rail safety this ties very closely to the evaluation of other forms of transport alternatives for rail safety, which to our party would include, unfortunately, defeated pipelines.

My previous motion to further study one pipeline, which is currently facing challenges within Canada, unfortunately was defeated.

I certainly can understand the concerns that we have many other studies going on as well as the minister coming, we hope, for the main estimates. With my notice of motion, of course, we will ask the minister to come for the main estimates.

There never seems to be enough time to cover everything, and given Mr. Bachrach's long-standing interest in this, and my interest in it for comparatives for how to best measure the transport of goods across our nation, and to get our resources to market and to do so safely, we support Mr. Bachrach's motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. El-Khoury, go ahead.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

That's actually a good motion that the committee has agreed to. Mrs. Kusie has expressed her opinion. I wanted to hear from other colleagues, such as the Conservatives or the Bloc on what they think about the deadline. If the committee could reach an agreement, it would be best for all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, go ahead.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I feel that we have gone over the issue enough. There were a lot of comments on the motion that Mr. Bachrach introduced. He made his arguments and I rather agree with them. I would even say that the topic would be worth considerably more than one single meeting.

We would not say no to the Minister being present. Since we are talking about the end of March, there is still time. We are not talking about tomorrow or next week.

The motion is perfectly reasonable and I propose that we move to the vote so that we can continue with the committee's business.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Fillmore, just for clarification, are you putting the amendment forward?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Yes, I am putting the amendment forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Clerk, please read the amendment, so we can vote on it, and then I'll go to the main motion, as it would be or not be amended.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Michael MacPherson]

My understanding is that the amendment removes all of the text after the words “second hour”. The motion would end there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Is that correct, Mr. Fillmore?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Any questions or comments?

Mr. Clerk, please go ahead with the vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays)

We're now going to go back to Mr. Bachrach for questions to the witnesses.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of the committee members for discussing that motion. I really appreciate it.

Professor Whiteside, you mentioned, in your introductory remarks, the idea of reversing the procurement process. I believe those were your words, and there were some comments made by the CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank along those lines. I come from the municipal sector. I also represent a very rural region of Canada made up of very small communities.

When we go out and try to match the needs of private investors, is there a risk that rural communities and rural infrastructure could lose out in that situation?

[Prof. Heather Whiteside]

I think there is a real risk in that for rural and remote communities or really any community anywhere that is interested in a type of project that investors are not interested in. What is that? Well, that's a small project in terms of capital costs, a project that is very risky, as we heard about. One of the selling points for the P3 community with the CIB is that it would take risk away. That's an absolute dream for an investor, to not actually have to bear any of the risk and to profit from it.

Rural and remote communities just might not have the kinds of infrastructure needs, other than probably broadband, which the CIB seems interested in targeting, or a few other things—retrofits, of course, or promoting a green infrastructure shift generally. But these things like LRTs are not quite so important for rural and remote communities. Maybe they need things like community centre upgrades or other kinds of community theatre projects, small water upgrades, things that probably the CIB and most likely private investors would not be eager to get their hands on, because they aren't able to be commercialized or they aren't necessarily profitable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Professor, and thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Soroka for five minutes.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the presenters today.

My first question is for Ms. Van Buren. You had mentioned in your discussions at the start that we need to build the investor confidence. Under the bank, because there is basically almost a guarantee that the investors can't lose any money, what do you mean by saying they need to build confidence with investors in these projects?

[Mary Van Buren]

Investor confidence speaks to our country as a whole and to how procurement and projects happen. When there's a lot of red tape, when we see projects that we think have a green light and then other things get in the way, like a regulatory process that is not as crisp as we thought, these are all barriers to how procurement can flow. Of course, that impacts investor confidence.

As I said in my earlier comments, Canada is of course a global trading country, so we need to make sure that investors who are interested in Canada, not just within Canada, stay interested, because we're competing on a global stage.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Ms. Bull, you haven't had a question yet, so I'll put my questions to you.

Besides the one project with the power line and the Internet, have you had any other indigenous communities applying or getting funding or looking at applications for these projects for P3s?

[Tabatha Bull]

Thank you.

There is one other project that the CIB has, that's in their list, and that's an Oneida solar storage project. That's a partnership with NRStor for battery storage.

From our perspective, we definitely see a number of other indigenous communities that have projects that are ready and in need of infrastructure spending. There are actually 40 shovel-ready projects in first nations communities across Canada. We've seen success here in Ontario in projects where we've seen investment and partnerships between indigenous communities and corporations. We see a number of corporations that are our members at CCAB that are looking to work and invest with communities.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Do you think that under this bank we're actually going to get the investment from the private sector into these communities, or is there possibly a better way to fund some of these infrastructure deficits within the communities?

[Tabatha Bull]

I do think if we look at these two projects already, and NRStor's investment and their focus on being able to work with communities, particularly in green energy in remote and rural communities that are still particularly reliant on diesel generation, we see there is a real interest in private investment to work with those communities to get off diesel reliance.