Transport Committee on March 11th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Riordan and Mr. Rogers.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Earlier, I asked Dr. Riordan about potential non‑compliance with laws, be they provincial or municipal laws or even environmental laws, as soon as a project receives $1 from the federal government. I would have liked to hear from Mr. Vick of CUPE on that as well.

Do you have anything to say about that, Mr. Vick?

[Mathieu Vick]

Could you repeat your question? I'm sorry; I thought your question was going to be for Dr. Riordan.

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

Since the Canada Infrastructure Bank is a crown corporation and, under its incorporating act, a project funded by the bank is considered a federal government project, this type of project wouldn't be subject to provincial legislation or municipal regulations. It would allow the bank to be exempted from obligations set out in certain environmental regulations, for instance. As a result, a provincial or municipal government could do little to oppose the project.

What do you think? Do you have any concrete examples that would illustrate this situation?

[Mathieu Vick]

In concrete terms, we could think of the Réseau express métropolitain, which is one of the flagship projects of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. It has been studied, particularly by the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement in Quebec. In fact, it said no to the project. It felt that the project shouldn't go ahead, for many reasons. In particular, it suggested that the project would simply cannibalize the public network, since 90% of the users of this new service would already be users of the public network.

Finally, as I said earlier, the government amended the act so that construction would no longer be subject to environmental studies.

When you again try to combine public policy objectives with profit maximization objectives, you're certainly going to have these kinds of problems.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Vick.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We're now moving on to the NDP.

Mr. Bachrach, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a few questions for Mr. Ramsay.

We heard Ms. Skivsky talk about the need for smaller projects and for smaller communities to participate in these infrastructure programs. I know that you have worked quite a bit with the municipal sector, and I am wondering whether the private investment model is particularly good. Does it lend itself to smaller communities?

Second, I know you followed very closely the experience in Mapleton. We haven't heard too much about what exactly happened there, and I wonder, if you have time in your response, if you could answer both my first question and walk us through what happened in Mapleton with the proposal for the water and wastewater project there.

[Robert Ramsay]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach. I'll try to be brief.

Absolutely, there is a need for funding for infrastructure in small communities. There is a serious need across the country in a number of different sectors, particularly in municipal utilities and other upgrades and retrofits that would meet the government's climate mitigation goals, which are good and we celebrate.

But the CIB model, as we saw play out in Mapleton, demonstrated an unsuitability for that context. The pace of the project start-up, legal consultation and negotiation of contracts was a significant cost to the town, which paid hundreds of thousands of dollars without getting a project in the end. When they looked at the CIB project package they were considering versus funding the project themselves through capital debt, they realized that it would be cheaper to do it themselves because they could finance the project at much cheaper rates themselves.

That experience I think would be for small municipalities across the country that have limited financial resources and are wary of getting into more expensive P3 contracts.

There is a separate answer here, too, to a question you didn't ask, which is the suitability of private corporations being involved in decisions about the public infrastructure that is so vital to Canadians' health, like water and waste water, but you didn't ask that question, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay, and Mr. Bachrach.

We're now going to move on to the Conservatives with Mr. Kram.

Mr. Kram, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I had my five minutes previously, so I believe I will be turning my time over to either Mr. Soroka or Mr. Shipley. I'm not sure which one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Shipley, go ahead.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and Mr. Kram.

That is a great team attitude, everybody.

To start off, this would be directed to Ms. Skivsky.

Over the last few weeks we've been hearing many comments and obviously some frustrations with projects being rolled out by the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I've heard that today from you, too, I believe, not to put words in your mouth, Ms. Skivsky. I'll let you speak for yourself in a moment.

I would like, first of all, to recite a quote that I was given by a municipality when I was doing my own bit of research on the Canada Infrastructure Bank. It was that, “In summary, our point of view was that the CIB process and project structuring was opaque. We could not get any straightforward answers, nor could we get clear commitments from the CIB.” They did not recommend working with them, which is obviously disheartening. We all want to see jobs being rolled out and we all want to see the economy getting back and going.

Ms. Skivsky, I'll direct this towards you because, at the beginning I believe you said that the rollout lag was too slow to help with the economic recovery. I was scribbling awfully quickly when you said that, so if I am wrong, correct me.

Obviously, there is some frustration. Would you say this lag is tied in with what I was saying about this bank's being opaque and tough to get answers from? Is that what you're hearing from your field?

[Sandra Skivsky]

The first point is that trade contractors aren't involved in that first level of looking at where and what projects take place. The lag you speak of happens not only with the CIB, but with a lot of infrastructure spending. If you look at the Canada infrastructure plan, $15 billion is still sitting there. As that program is winding down, it still hasn't been deployed. It's the deployment that makes a difference to the folks whom I work with and for. It's having that project active and started and people on a job site.

I understand that a lot of projects take a longer planning process, but when these programs are announced, there is a delay in turning that.... The term shovel-ready, as I mentioned before, doesn't mean anything to the industry. One thing that does mean something is shovel in the ground. That's the distinction. This is not from a policy perspective and whether it's difficult to work with the bank. I wouldn't know. All I know is that it's very hard to get data to see where things lie and which direction they're going in.

Between an announcement and a project is where I'm getting questions. I have contractors in western Canada who should have had certain projects; they've even gone through the process. Somewhere something is holding them up because they are not started, and until they start at my end of the food chain, they don't count.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you for that.

One of the things you mentioned earlier, and in part of your answer right there, was that having people on the job site is what's important. We definitely all agree on that. For an economic recovery we need to get some jobs rolling and Canada back on track.

You mentioned earlier that promises and announcements don't create jobs. Do you feel that from this bank or platform there have been too many promises and announcements and not real action?

[Sandra Skivsky]

As I said, I went through the website and I looked at the projects. After four years you have one.... I know a number of advisory roles have been taken with certain projects, but I don't know the actual date of many of these things the bank's involved with. A timeline attached to some of these things would certainly help.

When you have money announced for something and a purpose, and after four years if I ask any of my members if they have worked on a job that was related to that and they say no, then you lose that impact at that level. Whether it's true or not, if people don't know that the bank or infrastructure monies have been spent on something, then it doesn't happen.

We have a delay. That's the problem. We have an announcement, and everyone thinks this is great news, but then I have contractors saying the projects aren't there.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley, and Ms. Skivsky.

We're now going to move to the Liberals.

Mr. El-Khoury, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses and thank them very much for appearing before the committee today.

My first question is for Dr. Riordan or Ms. Skivsky.

On the one hand, the Canada Infrastructure Bank's project accelerator program works with developers, provides expert advice and helps to find creative funding solutions.

Could you talk about the important role the Canada Infrastructure Bank can play and how creative funding can help to move projects forward better?

On the other hand, as you know, we're in a health crisis. The pandemic is a global problem, and Canadians aren't immune. The priority of this government and all Canadians is to get the economy moving again and create jobs for Canadians. The Conservatives, and particularly our colleague Andrew Scheer, seem to have another idea: they are calling for over $12 billion in cuts.

I'd like to hear your opinion on that.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Scheer, on a point of order.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I think it's been well established by this committee that—

[A voice]

It was $18 billion.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

—this accusation is false and that it's the Liberal government that let 40% of the infrastructure money lapse—