Thanks, Chair.
To be absolutely clear, we have nothing to hide and, of course, that was the point of the original amendment to the motion, to have the CEO join us and answer any questions that you have.
Again, the fact remains that we are asking the committee to break the law. It's politically motivated to encourage the CIB to experience trouble and to make it appear that it's failing, and I want to ask my fellow committee members this. You're proposing to do this now to the Lake Erie Connector group? Is REM in Montreal next? Is the Oneida battery project in Ontario next? Is the southern Manitoba fibre project next? Who next will have to pull their pants down for this committee before we get a project built in Canada under the Canada Infrastructure Bank?
There is a witness on this call who I'm sure would not want to have their competitive financial information or trade secrets revealed to satisfy a political appetite that is not in the least helpful to help Canadians recover from this pandemic economically or to build the infrastructure in Canadian communities that needs to get built. This is a terrible waste of time.
This is a wonderful panel of witnesses and I would love to have a chance to talk to them about a progressive vision of Canada where we shift to active transportation and electrification of bus fleets and the rebuilding of a rail program in the country and shift away from 20th century fuel sources to renewables. I hope that we get a chance to come back and talk to them.
This very project that we're talking about, the Lake Erie Connector, at its heart is about shifting to those greener energy sources and giving a chance for good, clean Canadian power to reach a wider market, help the country reach its emissions reduction targets and put Canadians to work. It's exactly what the CIB was intended to do. There is a law that governs the way the CIB interacts with its proponents, and I think the relevant section needs to go into the record so I'm going to read that now.
This is subsection 28(1) on privileged information:
Subject to subsection (2), all information obtained by the Bank, by any of the Bank’s subsidiaries or by any of the subsidiaries of the Bank’s wholly-owned subsidiaries in relation to the proponents of, or private sector investors or institutional investors in, infrastructure projects is privileged and a director, officer, employee, or agent or mandatary of, or adviser or consultant to, the Bank, any of its subsidiaries, or any of the subsidiaries of its wholly-owned subsidiaries must not knowingly communicate, disclose or make available the information, or permit it to be communicated, disclosed or made available.
This is the law, friends.
Subsection 28(2), on authorized disclosure, reads:
Privileged information may be communicated, disclosed or made available in the following circumstances: (a) it is communicated, disclosed or made available for the purpose of the administration or enforcement of this Act and legal proceedings related to it; (b) it is communicated, disclosed or made available for the purpose of prosecuting an offence under this Act or any other Act of Parliament; (c) it is communicated, disclosed or made available to the Minister of National Revenue solely for the purpose of administering or enforcing the Income Tax Act or the Excise Tax Act; or (d) it is communicated, disclosed or made available with the written consent of the person to whom the information relates.
Nowhere in this unamended motion are we respecting that, and if I'm reading what's happening here.... It's hard to tell from the confusing signals whether there is an appetite for the amendment that the redactions, the production of documents, be consistent with relevant legislation concerning confidentiality or not. I certainly hope we wouldn't pass a motion that would disregard that at the least.
Now I ask for some common sense here and for us to step back and remind ourselves of what the CIB is trying to do, what we're all trying to do, which is to invest in Canadian communities, rebuild community infrastructure for future generations, recover from a pandemic, put people to work, reduce GHGs and increase the ability of equity-seeking groups that Ms. Saxe talked about in her testimony so they can participate in an economic recovery as well.
Please, let's have some common sense.