Mr. Speaker, private sector involvement in public infrastructure is nothing new. It has been done around the world and in Canada, in fact. The Canada pension plan has invested in highways in Canada.
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is involved in a major public transit infrastructure project in British Columbia.
The Canada Line is partly owned by the Quebec pension plan. Therefore, this is nothing new.
What is new is this bank. I have a lot of questions, quite frankly, about how this bank is going to turn out. The government is talking about loan guarantees for foreign investors and investment bankers. Therefore, the profit of these infrastructure projects will go to the private sector company and all of the risk will go to Canadian taxpayers. If the project does not generate the revenues promised, taxpayers foot the bill. However, if the project is profitable, then these international investors will get all the money. That is what the Liberals mean when they talk about public-private partnerships. The public gets the costs and the risk and the private sector gets all the profit.
In a true free enterprise economy, risk and reward go together. Any attempt by businesses to put the risk of their investments on the backs of taxpayers should be aggressively resisted.