Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I stated at a previous meeting when a previous iteration of this motion came forward, the NDP shares deep concerns about the Canada Infrastructure Bank and its fixation on delivering private profits when building public infrastructure. We also share the concerns about the track record of the bank so far and its inability to get projects built.
However, I would say two things.
First of all, I'm a little concerned that this is part of the ongoing Conservative project to obstruct other subjects in the House. Because we've already, as a committee, clearly articulated through the recommendation in our report our desire that the CIB be abolished, I would just offer that I'm not sure this is going to advance that effort in any meaningful way.
The other concern I have is that point (c) says that “the gap between spending on salaries and spending on projects continues to widen”. Now, if spending on salaries is going up and spending on projects is either stagnant or going down, then the gap would actually be narrowing.
I'm just a bit unclear on what's being said here. Clearly we don't want the spending on salaries to catch up with the spending on projects. I think it's pretty clear that the bank is spending less on salaries than it's spending on projects. If the intention is that the bank should be spending less on salaries and more on projects, my concern is that the wording of the motion actually suggests the opposite. It's expressing the concern that the gap between spending on salaries and spending on projects continues to widen. If the bank were successful and were building all kinds of infrastructure projects across the country and spending more and more of its endowment, then the gap would widen, one would hope. One would hope that the spending on salaries wasn't going to keep up with the pace of spending on infrastructure projects.
I'm just a little worried that we're sending an unclear message and muddying the waters when the concern is really that the executives of the bank are being compensated fairly richly and the bank's performance to date hasn't been anything to scream about.
I don't think I can support the motion as written. I'm concerned it sends an unclear message on behalf of the committee.