Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm delighted to be here with you all today. As you may be able to tell, I am not in an office. I actually thought that once I left Parliament it would no longer ruin family vacations, but here I am, talking to you from Marseilles, France, on a cruise ship. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you today about one of my favourite topics, which has to do with my time in Parliament.
Mr. Chair, I will be short in my remarks as well.
I have taken a look at the topic of the meeting. The meeting is on the role of McKinsey & Company in the creation and the beginning of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. My opening statement will be about my time in Parliament, which was from 2015 until 2019, and before that as a member of the government from 2008 to 2015.
The record will show, and Hansard will show, that as a member of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, I voted against the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. From my perspective, there was a perfectly good Crown corporation that was reporting to the finance minister, known as PPP Canada, which administered the P3 Canada fund.
Since that time, there has been $1.3 billion in 25 large or complex infrastructure projects facilitated by this fund. I'll give you a few examples—transit in Barrie, Edmonton, Montreal, Saskatoon and Calgary; clean energy in Kokish River and in Surrey; water treatment in Alberta in a number of different places; and housing renewal in Downtown Eastside, Vancouver.
This was a successful Crown corporation that, as I said, reported directly to the Minister of Finance and actually had the knock-on effect and impact of P3 projects and offices being set up in the provinces across the country in order to facilitate smooth working amongst provinces and the federal state. In fact, it was a success. In 2011 Jim Flaherty was named minister of the year by an Infrastructure Investor publication as a result of the creation of this fund.
In 2015, with the success of the Trudeau government coming to power, PPP Canada was no longer going to be in place, for lack of a better term. The Crown was dissolved. In response to that period of time, I believe we saw, or at least I saw when I was still in Parliament, a loss of time when dealing with infrastructure projects. To give you a snapshot, between 2018 and 2023 this loss of time has seen changes in P3s going from Finance or something like it to now reporting to Infrastructure. Ministers have changed four separate times since its inception. It was given its own ministry for a period of time, but now it's back with Intergovernmental Affairs.
I would just say that, in your deliberations, Mr. Chair, governance and structure and focus are very important when it comes to delivering in Crown corporations. I believe a lot more could have been accomplished in the period of time since 2015, and with the same outcomes, through the vehicle of PPP Canada with, of course, the change in mandate that is the right of the government that won in 2015.
Thank you very much. Those are my opening remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions.