Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I would like to speak to it. I do want to speak to it at a high level, and then I'll get a bit more granular on the motion itself.
Mr. Chair, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, I think we all—at least on this side of the table—understand, is an innovative approach to get more infrastructure built for Canadians, while leveraging funds with all sectors of the Canadian economy to, in fact, in terms of the overall project costs, save Canadian taxpayers' dollars by including other partners as leverage partners to get projects off the ground and have them built for the benefit of Canadians but at a lesser cost because of the leveraged funding that's being made available from all those sectors.
By leveraging public dollars, the bank has attracted—and this is fact—over $10 billion and enabled 28 billion dollars' worth of infrastructure projects across the country that would otherwise not have gone forward. Some of these include the purchase of approximately 280 electric zero-emission buses and associated charging infrastructure over the next five years in British Columbia; the procurement of up to 450 zero-emission buses to replace the City of Brampton's current fleet; and better Internet connectivity for almost 200,000 households in under-serviced Ontario communities, including, quite frankly, in an adjacent community to mine and, ironically, in the community that Ms. Lewis represents.
Canadians can rest assured that every public dollar spent on infrastructure is creating jobs. It's unlocking the housing Canadians need, and it fights climate change by building the economy of the future.
I can speak a lot more to this, Mr. Chair, but I am going to get a bit more granular on the background of what Ms. Lewis is referring to in her motion. The proponents made the decision not to move ahead with the proposed project in July 2022 as the project's economics had significantly deteriorated, according to their business plan expectations, in comparison to what the reality was back in 2022.
No funding agreement was completed between the proponents and the CIB. Expenses for legal and technical consultants are a normal part of the due diligence required for all projects to proceed towards an investment stage. Expenses are budgeted annually as part of the CIB's commitment to good governance, which, quite frankly, was established by the members in accordance with what was put before them when the creation of the CIB was put in place. The due diligence completed will be valuable, should the proponents decide to restart the project.
Mr. Chair, I do want to give some project descriptions so we can put a perspective to the comments that were made by Ms Lewis. However, the Lake Erie connector project is a proposed 1,000-megawatt underwater transmission line connecting converter stations in Nanticoke, Ontario, and Erie, Pennsylvania. The 117-kilometre high voltage, direct-current connection was designed to help improve the reliability and security of Ontario's energy grid, while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions between both power markets.
The benefit of the CIB involvement is the participation of the CIB, which was structured to enhance the project's viability, improve taxpayer value and provide benefits to all electricity consumers in Ontario. Once again, as I mentioned earlier, with respect to leveraging dollars, it has less of an impact, saving the Canadian taxpayers those very capital dollars. The CIB's participation was designed to address a potential funding gap in the project by providing low-cost financing to reduce revenue needs while satisfying all project development requirements.
Once again—and I do want to repeat what I said in camera, and I'll say it in public—the concept in the business model of the CIB is simply to leverage dollars from all sectors within the Canadian economy. That being said and that being completed, as I mentioned earlier with this specific project and the many more I highlighted, it then does two things. First, it lessens the overall financial impact on Canadian taxpayers. That one dollar then turns into three to four dollars, which would otherwise come out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers. Instead, the funding is leveraged to come in from other sectors throughout the Canadian economy. Secondly, and probably most importantly, capital work gets done in the best interests of what's needed here in this country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.