Transport Committee on April 29th, 2021

[Sean McCoshen]

They're simply going to transport it more efficiently and in larger quantities that are needed. It's a general cargo railroad with a passenger component to it.

It's a simple method of flying stuff in or driving it in on an ice road. Heating is done through burning Bunsen burners and whatnot. Then food has to be flown in or driven in on an ice road. That results in the cost. With regard to that $8 bag of Doritos, probably $7 of that is the fuel and transportation to get it up there. I mean, I'm good friends with an architect by the name of Douglas Cardinal, and he said that Canada's north is not just third world; it's fourth world. The only way we're going to alleviate these disparities is through economic parity. If you don't have proper infrastructure going up north, you're never going to achieve economic parity. It's that simple. It's shocking.

J.P., do you want to talk about that?

[Jean Paul Gladu]

I think you've hit it, Sean. At the end of the day, trains are great at reducing GHGs. With regard to loads going up, you can put a lot more on train than you can on a truck. Housing.... From an indigenous person's perspective, the ability to get snow machines, ATVs and those things that northerners rely on for their way of life is going to have a major impact on the north as well.

I'm more of a salt and vinegar fan.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Oh, oh!

Indeed, Mr. Gladu. Thank you.

I'm going to use my remaining 20 seconds to move the motion I put on notice on Tuesday, April 27:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), an order of this committee do issue for a copy of all relevant documents relating to the agreement signed with ITC holdings regarding the Lake Erie Connector, including, but not limited to, the agreement itself, all correspondence between ITC Holdings and the CIB, any appendices, terms of a repayment schedule, the Bank's evaluation of the project and any other relevant documents in an unredacted form within 20 days of the adoption of this order.

Thank you, witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

The time has stopped, and we're now going to questions.

Mr. Fillmore, I see your hand is up. Go ahead; you have the floor.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Ms. Kusie, for that intervention.

I've been thinking a lot about this motion, and it creates a few difficulties. I'd like to go through them and make sure that all members from all parties on the committee understand the challenges in the motion.

First and foremost, the motion is asking the Canada Infrastructure Bank to violate its own enabling legislation. The CIB Act has a section entitled “Privileged information”, and that section lays out that all information obtained by the bank in relation to project proponents or project investors is privileged. It states that the CIB “must not knowingly communicate, disclose or make available the information, or permit it to be communicated, disclosed or made available.”

The CIB Act is not a long act, and I encourage members to have a look at it if they haven't. This particular section is laid out in detail, because it's important for an entity like the CIB to maintain the trust of investment partners and project owners that it will keep that commercially sensitive information confidential. This is potentially market-moving information, and this act exists for a reason. The motion is kind of a non-starter based on that, but there's a little bit more.

The next point is that the investment agreement for the Erie connector is not yet finalized. The CIB has not financially closed with the proponent, and it's not a done deal. Bringing this kind of uncertainty, exposure and political risk into a deal is simply not a responsible thing for our committee to undertake.

In fact, many members of the committee from all parties have said that they wished to see the CIB getting more deals going and more projects completed. This motion would throw cold water on that, slow things down, and erode trust in the process.

Third, members have also sometimes questioned the independence of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and have argued that the CIB needs to be fully independent so that it can get deals done free of political interference. Again, this motion is about political interference, isn't it? It goes against that argument.

To wrap it up, I'll go back to my first point. I don't think it would reflect well on our committee to pass a motion telling the CIB to violate its own legislation and, in fact, break the law when we don't really need to do that.

There's a wonderful alternative that would respect the intention of Ms. Kusie's motion, and I'll lay it out. It's very short, but in essence it would be a simple amendment to the motion presented by Ms. Kusie in which we would strike all the words after the first word “that”, and replace them with, “The committee invite Ehren Cory, the CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, to appear before the committee to discuss the Lake Erie corridor and full transparency and open communication with this committee.”

I'll hold my comments there. I'd love to hear what other members have to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Fillmore has a clarification. Are you putting that forward as an amendment?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

I am. I can repeat it if you'd like.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That's fine.

Thank you, Mr. Fillmore.

We are now going to take questions on the amendment. I have a speaking order.

Mr. Scheer, you're up next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Do I understand that we're now going to be debating the amendment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Correct.

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

Thank you.

While I appreciate Mr. Fillmore's comments, I would say that only the Liberal Party seems to view accountability and transparency as some kind of political interference.

We have a situation such that we are trying to get more information out of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. It's been a bit of a challenge to do so.

I would view your proposed amendment as a wonderful suggestion for a separate motion. I would love to have Mr. Ehren Cory come back, and he could speak to this as well as to some unresolved questions regarding the bank's operations and mandates. I don't see the two as being mutually exclusive at all.

If the company involved, ITC Holdings, wants to keep its operations confidential, if it wants to keep its project proposals secret, if it doesn't want to divulge information, there are tons of lending institutions in Canada that provide that kind of service. It can go to the CIBC or RBC.

It's owned by a company called Fortis Inc., which had over $8.9 billion worth of revenue last year. It paid out over $800 million to shareholders last year alone. I'm sure it has a wonderful relationship with financial institutions in Canada. If it were looking for assistance to get this project built, there are a number of lending institutions that provide that kind of confidentiality.

When you go to government, when you look for government to provide that type of assistance, I believe it is essential that taxpayers know exactly what they're on the hook for. We have a situation here in which the Canada Infrastructure Bank, using taxpayers' dollars, has made an announcement. Not even all of the details are provided on their web page, and on this point I'd just like to make a comparison.

I'm sorry, but I think someone is not on mute, there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Would everybody make sure they're on mute, please?

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

I'd just like to make a comparison. Even for the Réseau project in Montreal, at the very least on the website for that project the bank has included the repayment schedule and the interest rate. For this project, we don't have that at all.

I don't believe and I don't accept at all for a second that in providing this committee with the opportunity to go over how this decision was made, we're being told that the bank is supposed to use public money to leverage private dollars. Here we have a situation in which it's the exact opposite, and private money seems to be leveraging public money. I believe it's eminently responsible for the bank to show this committee on what it based its decision to spend $655 million worth of taxpayers' money.

I'd be happy to hear what other members have to say on that.

I reserve the right to come back if there is more discussion on this, Mr. Chair, so I'll lower my hand and raise it back up again, and hopefully I can respond to other points that are made.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Scheer.

Mr. Rogers, go ahead.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

For the last couple of meetings we have spoken about the line of work this committee has in front of us. Personally, I think we should be focusing on that work.

We have witnesses here today on an important subject, and I think we shouldn't be wasting their time and ours on another motion. This committee already questioned the minister for infrastructure about this very same project just last week.

I'm not sure where the analogy is or where the comparison is with the CIBC and RBC. That's like comparing apples to oranges, so I'm not sure exactly where the opposition is coming from on that. It just makes no sense to me.

Anyway, I just want to make those comments, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

We'll now go to Mr. Bachrach.

You have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Speaking directly to the amendment, I tend to agree with Mr. Scheer that it's a lovely amendment. It would make an even better stand-alone motion, perhaps with the timing coinciding with the arrival of the documents.

This motion is really about transparency and accountability for the public dollars that are going into these projects. The concerns around the structure of the infrastructure bank are now well known. They've been affirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. We need more light on this issue, not less light. We need to understand exactly how these deals are structured and what the private investors are expecting to get out of it, and we need to do that on behalf of all Canadians.

I'll be voting against the amendment, and I certainly support the direction of the original motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

We will move on to Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a great deal of interest in the motion on the floor.

I was quite surprised by this project. I thought that the Canada Infrastructure Bank funds were to be used to build public infrastructure. I am now trying to figure out how this serves the public. It could also be explained to us more in the documents that will be presented to us.

As I understand from the last few comments, there is a concern that our committee's schedule is quite full. However, I don't think that the request for documents is detrimental to the continuity of our work. We're not the ones who are going to get the documents, they're going to be provided to us by government officials. So I don't necessarily see a connection between the two.

Of course, if we want to add meetings to this, we may have an opportunity to do that later, unless Mr. Fillmore wants to make it an actual amendment. I would actually be very open to such an initiative.

That being said, while I am very interested in this topic, since we are having a meeting today and we have witnesses with us, I would like us to have the opportunity to address them as well. To that end, my colleagues could limit their time.

There is one particular witness I would like to ask questions of, but my six minutes are already up. Since we are still wasting time, I am afraid I will not have a chance to ask my questions, which would be very disappointing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We're now going to move on to Ms. Jaczek.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Certainly, I'm supportive of what Mr. Fillmore has suggested because I'm particularly concerned about the unredacted form of what is being requested. As Mr. Fillmore has said, the way this is written, the motion is asking the CIB to violate its own enabling legislation. The CIB Act has a section entitled “Privileged information”, so how can we possibly expect them to violate that particular section of the act?

In essence, as I understand it, the deal has not yet closed, which makes it even more difficult to request this kind of information at this particular time.

I feel exactly the same way as Monsieur Barsalou-Duval: We have witnesses here and we were engaging in an extremely interesting conversation. I think that since this motion has been brought forward, we need to be extremely cautious about in any way suggesting that the documents should be unredacted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Jaczek.

Can members of the committee still hear me?

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

Yes, we can.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you.

I'm locking out here. I have no video, so I'm kind of blind here, guys.

I am now going back to Mr. Fillmore.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thanks, Chair.

I thank my colleagues for the thoughtful commentary.

The fact remains that the motion is asking the committee to break the law, and I think we should all think long and hard about that. We've seen a string of motions and lines of attack over the past number of months from Mr. Scheer and his Conservative colleagues that are blatantly political and are looking to try to embarrass the CIB or to degrade the ability of the CIB—and, in fact, the entire infrastructure department—to achieve its mandate. That's what this is.

I mean, for a party that has been trying to embarrass the government, what better way to do it than to pass a motion that would throw cold water on investment to the Infrastructure Bank and prevent more projects from happening? It's brilliant in its simplicity, but it's also terribly wrong. It's not just wrong—it's illegal.

I'm sorry that Mr. Bachrach perhaps is joining in the political theatre with the Conservative Party, or perhaps he earnestly believes that this level of transparency would somehow be helpful in getting more infrastructure built. I can't assume the motive, but I'm very sorry that the motion is even on the table.

However, it's clear from the comments, including Monsieur Barsalou-Duval's comments, that there is an appetite among the opposition parties to break the law here and move forward in some way. I'm going to try to mitigate that damage and follow along with what Ms. Jaczek said. It's very important in any document production order a committee like this undertakes that the order be consistent with the relevant legislation concerning confidentiality.

I'm going to be withdrawing my previous amendment and proposing an amendment to the original motion. I can take some direction from the clerk or the chair on the orderly way to do that. I would like to ultimately get to a place where we amend the original motion to include this very specific language: “and that the production of documents be consistent with relevant legislation concerning confidentiality”.

I would also like to make an amendment that extends the patently unreasonable 20 days—in an era where we have committees working literally around the clock—and replace that with 60 days.

I would again like to hear from multiple parties on their appetite for those two amendments.

Thank you.