Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Again, I just have to keep going back to the point that there are dozens and dozens of lending institutions that provide financing without the need to disclose to the public the arrangements. Mr. Rogers, a few rounds ago you said you didn't understand the comparison between the CIBC and the CIB.
The point I was trying to make was that if a company is worried about the public having access to its confidential and privileged information, then it can go to a traditional lender. It can go to any one of the chartered banks. There are all kinds of financing options out there for people.
But, if it goes to government, if it's asking the government to forcefully reach into Canadians' pockets to give them money at either a preferential rate of interest or an extremely long repayment term, or who knows what, we don't know.... We're speculating here because we don't actually have the details. But, the fact that they went to the government, that the government tells us there's some type of advantage to the company....
That's the point I was endeavouring to make with that comparison. For companies that are worried about the secrecy and confidentiality and privileged nature of what their operations are, or what their forecasts are, as I said, there are lots of options for them to go to. But, if they choose to go to government, then I believe it's essential that we apply that level of accountability and transparency that we demand of other departments. We can file access to information requests. We can get this type of information when it's the Government of Quebec or the Government of Alberta through their various access to information laws. That type of disclosure is important.
I want to thank my NDP colleague, Mr. Bachrach, for bringing up the multiple examples of where committees have sent for papers, and specifically mentioned looking for unredacted information. Even in this Parliament there have been some examples of that.
I know the minister used this point, and I heard it again in the last round, talking about the Government of Ontario praising this project. Well, I've asked around. and it turns out that the Government of Ontario has not committed a dollar to this project; so, it's no surprise, if this federal government is coming along and saying they'll pay for this, for what would normally be considered a provincial project.
It's odd to me that if this is such a good project, then why does it need government money? If it's such a good project for Ontario, why hasn't Ontario committed any dollars to it? Minister Rickford has praised the project. Perhaps I might too if I were in his shoes. If the federal government was going to do something that the provincial government has so far refused to do, then it's no surprise there that he appreciates the Government of Canada stepping in and doing something that even it had evaluated was not in the interests of its taxpayers. Those are some of the questions that I struggle with.
I'll just go back to the question about the redaction and providing a loophole. I really do believe it's important for us. Someone suggested—I think Ms. Jaczek or maybe Mr. Fillmore— whether we would be doing this for every project that came through. Well, ideally, the government would not have written the legislation to keep these types of details secret. Ideally, the government would have written the legislation for the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I remind members that it passed this legislation at a time when it had a majority government, so it had the sole pen, the sole right of authorship of the legislation. Ideally, it would have written into the legislation more robust transparency and disclosure regimes, but it chose not to.
This is really the first situation where we have a private sector company involved in a project with the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has dispelled the notion that the Réseau project in Montreal and the Alberta irrigation project have private sector funds. He has dispelled that. He has concluded that the government's own definition of “private sector” and “public sector” means those two projects aren't eligible.
I think this is very timely to set the stage for accountability and disclosure if private sector companies that are going to profit from these projects.... This ITC Holdings, no doubt, has some way of recouping its investment and returning dividends to its shareholders. If they are going to benefit from that, if they are going to be able to win approval of their board members and shareholders by showing them how much money they're making on these types of projects, I believe it's eminently reasonable for them to explain to the Canadian taxpayer what's in it for them, what's in it for the taxpayer.