Transport Committee on March 23rd, 2021

[Yves Giroux]

It's very difficult for me to assess that question, because that's all in the eye of the beholder. But in terms of comparison, I can compare my office's budget to the bank's. The bank's operating expenditures are about $41 million or $42 million this year for 74 employees, if I heard correctly. My office has a little more than half that, so 40 employees, and we have a budget of around $7 million. That's all I can say.

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

It's expensive. I'll take that as your point.

Mr. Giroux, I wanted to ask you a question about transparency. We've heard a lot of questions around the difficulty you've had getting information from the government about infrastructure projects. Is the Canada Infrastructure Bank more or less transparent when it comes to providing that kind of information to Canadians and giving Canadians a really clear view of what's going on with their public investments?

[Yves Giroux]

We asked for information from the Canada Infrastructure Bank about their projects, their portfolio and so on. We were provided with information that's almost exclusively already public. They cited confidential information of a commercial nature, but our office is entitled to receive confidential information. We can keep that to ourselves and use it to provide reports to parliamentarians without divulging any confidential information.

Based on that, they're probably less transparent than the Department of Infrastructure, with which we deal on a regular basis.

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

Mr. Giroux, I live in a community of a little more than 5,000 people, and I represent a region that is predominately made up of small communities. I was concerned to read that you mentioned that insufficient size was a common reason that projects were rejected by the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Does the Canada Infrastructure Bank adequately address the needs of smaller communities in Canada when it comes to [Technical difficulty—Editor]?

[Yves Giroux]

That's a good question, to which, unfortunately, I don't have any answers because we didn't look at many of their projects. We looked at the projects for which they provided us information, and these are projects that are mostly in the public domain.

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

Mr. Giroux, you found that more than half of the projects that were rejected by the Canada Infrastructure Bank were rejected because they fell outside the bank's mandate. I'm familiar with funding programs being oversubscribed, but it seems like a really high percentage of projects entirely missed the mark in terms of the organization they were applying to. Does that seem unusually high to you, the percentage that were rejected because they were inconsistent with the mandate of the bank?

[Yves Giroux]

Again, it's a difficult question to answer.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we will be doing a more fulsome study of the bank, and we will be using benchmarking in that report with other institutions and other programs of a similar nature. So hopefully by that time, we will be able to provide you with a better answer as to whether it's unusual or totally normal to have that high rejection rate.

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

Mr. Giroux, in recent months, the government has doubled down on the infrastructure bank as a model for meeting infrastructure needs, and it has announced this $10-billion growth plan funded through the bank. Based on what you found in terms of the bank not being on track, do you believe the bank constitutes the best mechanism for delivering this funding? Is it wise to keep doubling down and putting more and more money into this mechanism that has failed to produce results?

[Yves Giroux]

You're putting me in the hot seat.

What we did was look at past projects, essentially, that are currently in the pipeline, and the bank provided us with information that's in the public domain. So it's looking at the past, and the past is summarized in our blog post.

To say it is failing would be a bit of a stretch. With the new CEO, there's hope that things will change and the bank's mandate will be fully delivered with a new CEO and a new approach. But if we judge that based on past performance, there is certainly room for improvement.

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

I imagine I'm running out of time.

Mr. Giroux, I wonder if I could ask you what some of the common rationales were for projects being rejected by the bank past the initial screening. Were those projects rejected because they failed to meet certain public interest criteria, or were there projects that were rejected because they failed to meet the criteria and the objectives of the private investment that the bank was trying to involve in those projects?

[Yves Giroux]

The top three reasons for projects not being pursued are these: falling outside of the mandate because they're an ineligible sector and not part of the five or six sectors that are part of the bank's mandate; insufficient size, I assume because it's too small; and lack of scalability.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Thank you, Mr. Giroux and Ms. Nahornick. I appreciate your time today.

I have to say this, because it's been bothering me since the question was asked. I would like some more clarification on the class in which you're placing pension funds as a public entity. I haven't heard, in my experience of 24 years in public office, of public entities being able to invest in government securities, investment-grade bonds and blue-chip stocks, and now, investing in different asset classes such as private equity, real estate infrastructure and securities.

I'm very curious and interested in finding that proper definition sometime in the very near future. Mr. Giroux, if you don't mind, I'd like to set up a call with you to come to some conclusion on that. I don't agree with the conclusions that were brought forward today by you. I'd like to get to the bottom of that, so that way we can bring some information back to committee with respect to that definition on pension funds.

With that, members, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you and of course all of the witnesses we had both in the first and second hour. We look forward to Thursday's meeting.

With that, I'll take this opportunity to adjourn this meeting.