Madam Speaker, I would like to quote the Liberal Party's election platform:
Stephen Harper has also used omnibus bills to prevent Parliament from properly reviewing and debating his proposals. We will change the House of Commons Standing Orders to bring an end to this undemocratic practice.
Now we are seeing the opposite. My question for the Minister of Finance has to do with the creation of the infrastructure bank. Throughout the election campaign, the Liberal Party kept saying, and rightly so, that it was a good time to borrow money, because interest rates were low.
What the Liberals never told us, however, was that two-thirds of the money used to pay for our infrastructure would come from private investors, who would ask for rates of return from around 7% to 9%, even for public infrastructure.
Why did the minister change the Liberal Party's strategy? Why was it talking about borrowing money at the low interest rate of 2% if it now intends to fill its friends' pockets, on the backs of taxpayers, with rates of return from 7% to 9%?