Evidence of meeting #27 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
It is inappropriate for another member to call a member, an honourable member, shameful. I expect a full apology.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. Lawrence.
I'm just going to advise all members to be selective when using words to describe other honourable members in this room. Let's try to keep this as cordial as possible.
With that, I'll turn the floor back over to Ms. Miedema.
You have four minutes, 15 seconds.
Liberal
Shannon Miedema Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was describing behaviour and the lack of respect given, not an actual person. I will continue.
I used to be the director of environment and climate change for the City of Halifax. I worked there for 15 years and worked with the Canada Infrastructure Bank for much of that. This project has been a long time in the making.
I know Mr. Roscoe. I know of the project. The City of Halifax is one of the participants in the Mersey River wind project. The city will be getting 75% of its energy from this project to help us achieve our climate goals locally and save money. It's a win-win-win, so I'm really happy about that.
I'm really happy about the other energy projects that the Canada Infrastructure Bank has done in giving shareholder interest to first nations and indigenous communities. I think the CIB is a shining example of how we can work together as a country and across parties on climate action, renewable energy, energy security and resilience, which we need to do. Climate cannot be a partisan issue.
The Mersey River wind project is the first renewable to retail license in Nova Scotia, the first and only that lets customers buy renewable electricity directly from developers. It was introduced under the former provincial Liberal government as a tool to introduce competition into the electricity market.
Mr. Cory, what are the benefits of a diversified electricity grid, particularly one that is increasingly grounded in renewable sources?
Chief Executive Officer, Canada Infrastructure Bank
I think this is one of the challenges that a number of provinces are facing. Certainly Nova Scotia is facing this as it tries to both grow its energy sector and meet the increasing demand for people to use electricity for transportation purposes and for heating, but also transitioning off a fossil-reliant grid.
The problems are threefold.
The most basic one is around affordability and the increase in costs as you make all of these investments.
The second is around reliability because renewables, while they're incredibly important, are not as stable. That means you need to invest in things like battery storage and transmission to balance the grid.
The third is you've got to keep creating competition and choice because we're trying to build a sector across the country. I think that's why our investments in Nova Scotia in general are ones that we're really proud of, and in particularly the Mersey River project, because it delivers on all three of those things.
Liberal
Shannon Miedema Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you, Mr. Cory.
Can you talk a bit about the gap that the Canada Infrastructure Bank is filling in allowing these important and innovative nation-building projects to move forward from a finance perspective?
Chief Executive Officer, Canada Infrastructure Bank
In general, there are two basic gaps that we're filling. One is an affordability gap. One is a risk gap.
By an affordability gap, what I mean is that building infrastructure is expensive. To the extent that we can help smooth that cost across the longer term, it helps to not create huge spikes. Given our challenges as a country in meeting basic affordability, if we can do that as the bank, we can act as a shock absorber as we make some of these generational investments. That's the one that we call “affordability”.
On the risk one, for lots of infrastructure projects, they have this “build it and they will come” problem. You are going to make an investment up front and you don't know for sure what the payout will be. Mersey would be an example of this. You're going to build a wind farm, but you have to go out and sell the capacity. That might take six months, or a year or two years. The ramp-up of that is uncertain. That's true when we build new ports or transportation systems in this country, and it's certainly true in Mersey. We call that a “risk gap”.
Every investment the CIB makes is filling one of those two gaps or in some mix both of them. That's certainly the case here, and if you look across all of our investments in Nova Scotia in the electricity grid, those are the two things we're doing. That's why we're there.
Liberal
Shannon Miedema Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you. I really appreciate all of your great work.
Can we expect any announcements of more projects in Canada in the near future that are focused on clean energy?
Chief Executive Officer, Canada Infrastructure Bank
There are no scoops for today, but I will say that we are really active across Atlantic Canada, certainly in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and P.E.I., and in the north and in parts of western Canada, in trying to make the energy transition that we need to be building our grid out for the future.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much.
We have eight minutes left. We'll go with Mr. Lawrence for four minutes, followed by Ms. Fancy for four minutes.
Mr. Lawrence, the floor is yours, sir.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
Thank you.
I want to pick up where I left off, Mr. Duguay.
You were unaware that the president, the chairman of the board and two directors were connected Liberal insiders.
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
We conducted standard due diligence, as we do for all projects.
As part of that due diligence, when you look at a counterparty, in some cases it will identify that the person previously—
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
—held public office.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
Mr. Duguay, yes or no, were you aware that the president and chairman of the board and two directors were connected Liberal insiders?
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
It's a fact that the individuals previously held public office. FINTRAC guidance doesn't necessarily import what are political connections. The test is reviewing whether individuals—
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
Did you know prior to giving the loan that the president, the chairman of the board and the two directors were related to former or current members of Parliament?
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
We reviewed the individuals—
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
No, Mr. Duguay, I'm going to stop you there. We are a Parliament. I am representing 100,000 people. We're representing 40 million.
I've asked you a simple question. Yes or no, did you know that the president, chairman of the board and two directors were relatives of former and current liberal MPs?
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
What I will say is we completed our standard due diligence process—
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
Mr. Duguay, that's not good enough.
Mr. Chair, this is not acceptable.
Liberal
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
I have asked a straightforward question and he has not given an answer.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I'm going to stop your time there, Mr. Lawrence. You have two minutes and 43 seconds left.
Colleagues, I'm going to ask once again that we do not talk over each other. We're not always satisfied or happy with responses provided by witnesses, but we try to make sure that we don't talk over each other.
You can continue to ask the questions, Mr. Lawrence, but for the health of our interpreters, I would ask that everybody kindly not talk over each other. I'm going to turn the floor back over to you. You have two minutes and 43 seconds, sir.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
Mr. Duguay, for the fourth time—this is a simple question—did you know that the president, the chairman of the board and two directors were relatives of either current or former Liberal members of Parliament?
General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canada Infrastructure Bank
We completed our due diligence checks, Mr. Chair. As I've said, we did identify, through our due diligence, that the individuals previously held public office. As part of our standard due diligence, we completed checks in respect of whether that would impose a higher risk profile. We operate at arm's length from government, and with respect to these individuals, there was no high-risk profile.
