One of the things that we have to come to grips with is that we have an infrastructure deficit across Canada. Despite making record investments as a federal government over the past eight years, there is more to do. This applies equally to housing and to infrastructure. We should be looking at new ways to pull capital into the Canadian economy that is going to achieve the social and economic outcomes we want to see.
The Canada Infrastructure Bank is a very good idea. In fact, different parts of the world have advanced similar kinds of ideas, some of which are playing copycat, so to speak, after the development of the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
The strength that the bank has, in my view, is that it's able to identify revenue-generating projects that provide some public good. It's able to tap into different sources of investment to fund those projects, which then create revenue that allows the proponent to pay back to the bank over time.
When we start with an initial amount of capital in the bank, this allows it to become self-sustaining. When they earn revenue with interest on loans that they make on commercial terms, they're able to protect the initial investment that the federal government makes, but in perpetuity continue to fund infrastructure that would not have been built but for the creation of the bank.
If we want to pull in big investors, pension funds and private developments that otherwise would not come, we need to create incentives that allow them to do that. When the bank can put competitive financing terms on the table, often for projects that could not get financing through conventional means, then we can actually see projects go ahead that otherwise would not have come to fruition in Canada.