Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do want to thank members of the committee for their interventions. I want to be clear that my intervention isn't to protect anybody. My intervention is just to make time productive. We have a great deal of reports that all parties have put forward that are in the queue right now, and we only have so many sessions in which to get those reports completed before we rise for the summer. They are studies, by the way, that are very important to Canadians in all regions: the northern airline study and the rural communities study, as well as other studies. Following that, there are reports that we want to bring to the House.
I'm just trying to make the best use of the time that we have available to us. Therefore, let's do it in a very strategic and constructive manner, dealing with the business of government versus the business of politics.
Having said that, I'll go back to my earlier comment. It's not my intent to protect anybody. Mr. Fraser has the full ability to stand on his own two feet with a great deal of strength. I think we've noticed that in the House, and we've noticed that at committee. Sean's not only a great part of the Liberal team; he's also a great part of the Parliament team. His intentions are all genuine, and we all appreciate that. I would welcome having him involved in this at some point. I just think it would be best if we take a more layered approach with respect to what the intentions of Ms. Lewis are.
Having said that, again I'll state this fact because I'm going to have a further amendment after my comments on this point: Let's not dismiss the history of leveraging and utilizing other partners to invest in capital projects throughout the country.
Our colleagues, for example, the Conservatives across the way, had 10 years to do something on infrastructure. How many projects did PPP Canada work on? I think that's what the title of it was: PPP Canada. It wasn't the Canada Infrastructure Bank; they called it PPP Canada. It worked on 25 projects with $1.3 billion. Let us compare that to just under five years with the Canada Infrastructure Bank and 48 projects. Let me go back to that $1.3 billion that the Conservatives invested in 10 years. That was all taxpayer-funded money. It was all from Canadians. The Canada Infrastructure Bank, in under five years, has had 48 projects and $10 billion of investment from the government. Do we know what that turned into? It turned into $28 billion of investment.
That's the intent of this. That's the intent and the meaning behind leveraging. Once again, it's alleviating the financial burden on Canadian taxpayers at all levels of government and accelerating the capital projects that this country so needs.
We heard at committee that investments have been transformational. In fact, I want to quote something we heard from a witness we had at the committee. She spoke about this on her own podcast, The Raitt Stuff. The episode is titled “The Infrastructure Deficit: the role of the Canada Infrastructure Bank”, and it's from January 30, 2023. Who said this? It was the Honourable Lisa Raitt, a former Conservative minister. She was talking about the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and she said:
...unfortunately, [the bank] has been the topic of a lot of political discussion in the past number of years. It was not supported by the Conservative Party at various times in the last Parliament and in this Parliament as well. However, you're doing a lot of work. You're getting [a lot of] projects done, and you are, I think, filling a need that has been shown to be necessary in order to get projects going here in Canada. So tell me what is going on in 2023 for the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the projects that you're going to be looking at?
Conservative former ministers do not even support the Conservative position on this. As most Canadians know, Conservative math just doesn't add up. They're reckless. They spent more taxpayer money to get fewer projects done in double the amount of time. This is the Conservative math for us.
I'm going to talk about some of these projects that I have heard members here today refer to as slush funds. I find that pretty interesting. They said that only Liberal insiders are getting rich from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, but I want to speak about a project in Alberta, the Arrow Technology Group, which is an $8.1-million investment. It is building broadband in under-serviced communities. These communities are in dire need of broadband services, including 20 indigenous and four rural communities.
Are the Conservatives suggesting that these under-serviced indigenous communities are rich Liberal insiders benefiting from this bank, or is it that they just can't wrap their heads around how to build the infrastructure that matters?
Once again, Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize mitigating the financial burden on Canadian taxpayers by leveraging those dollars. It ensures, as I mentioned, that what matters to Canadians is being invested in. It ensures that indigenous communities and rural communities are connected so that they have the ability to stay connected with loved ones and to create economic prosperity in these communities.
It's building infrastructure. It's building Canada. The fact that the Conservatives would insult indigenous and rural communities in Alberta by somehow calling it—