Mr. Speaker, before I became a member of Parliament and before I entered into financial services, I worked at McDonald’s as a kid. I worked at a pulp mill growing up in northern British Columbia, and I cleaned fish as a fish filleter in northern British Columbia. I know very well how hard Canadians work day in and day out, and I take great offence at this word “elite”. I am not an elite. I have worked very hard my entire life. My parents came here as immigrants, and we worked, whether it was cleaning or working at a fish plant, or whether it was my mother working as a dietician or my dad working at a pulp mill in northern British Columbia as a carpenter, a sheet metal worker, or a roofer. I take offence to that.
The infrastructure bank would invest in projects from coast to coast to coast. That is the target. We would leverage private capital to ensure that this was done in a way that respected taxpayers' dollars and respected Canadians' rights, and we would do it with institutions in Canada. That would allow us to undertake projects and accelerate investments in infrastructure.