Transport committee  Basically, I think it's when they can pass the test of a value-for-money audit. If it shows that there are significant savings over doing this in-house or through the public service, then I think they should be considered. As I said, it's also if they don't contravene any of the areas that I specified earlier.

Transport committee  Somebody tried to impersonate me earlier.

Transport committee  Through the chair, this is an excellent question and an excellent point. I am neither ideologically for or against P3s. I'm a pragmatist. If I think they are a better tool in a certain situation to spread costs, or whatever the reasons may be, I'm quite happy to see the government funding those.

Transport committee  Again, it's really a question of subsidiarity, as the Europeans would call it, that people at the ground level understand the local situations. That's not to say there aren't projects that require federal intervention and oversight. Clearly, going back to the construction of the railways, interprovincial bridges, those kinds of things, it seems to make a deal of sense to have some national thinking.

Transport committee  Yes, I am.

Transport committee  Occasionally, you can see conflicts of interest arise, but I think maybe what you're driving at is this. If you have a company or a couple of companies that effectively almost have a monopoly over contracts is that anti-competitive? At that point would we put a percentage and say you're only allowed to get 50% of the contracts, and then the other 50% has to be opened up to other companies?

Transport committee  Yes. I am absolutely for competition. It's in the public interest to have a competitive process. I would need a lot of convincing that it's worthwhile preventing that kind of competition. When I refer to these umbrella contracts, that's one of the things the umbrella contracts do, they actually preclude companies that are not in the initial stage from entering later on when things might change.

Transport committee  Actually, I do think that the original intention was to put it into green infrastructure, sustainable development-type projects, and we had the ICSPs and so on. We found when we researched that across the country, several provinces were really quite willing to comply with some of the oversight and some of the conditions.

Transport committee  It should be absolutely front and centre. There's no doubt in my mind that it is their responsibility. It's a problem when the federal government tries to make tax room for the provincial governments to step into, and they essentially will take the opportunity to not pass it on.

Transport committee  Through the Chair, thank you. That's actually a very good question. One of the issues we found when we studied the gas tax over three years, in five provinces, was the different problems that arise for municipalities. Some of them were saying they had 300 different types of funding, from either provincial, federal—various sources.

Transport committee  I think the last calculation I saw was about $140 billion.

Transport committee  In a sense, that's difficult to say without knowing exactly what's in place. It's a case of saying, does this activity add to the oversight, the due diligence, the accountability? If it doesn't, then why not consider taking it out? As I mentioned, I think there are ways we tend to get caught, particularly with the P3s, by saying that if they are made more or less transparent then we will get a quicker process.

Transport committee  I did take part in the red tape reduction project. I actually wrote a long paper for that, which I'd be happy to resubmit to this committee because there were some specifics around that.

Transport committee  I think there is a dependency culture we've created. I think you're absolutely right. I think it would be good if the cities, certainly the larger cities, had their own means for using income tax as I think they grow with wealth better than relying on property taxes. They do have the financial wherewithal to raise the money they need, but wouldn't you as a politician rather get money from another level of government, let them raise it rather than raise it yourself?

Transport committee  Yes, I think that's right. Once the terms of the funding are made clear, then I don't think those boundaries should be crossed with undue political—