Transport committee  I can start. I think that does get to a fundamental problem where the lower lending rates of the Canadian government don't necessarily mean there's less efficiency. As I talked about earlier, these P3 projects actually take much longer and they're therefore less efficient to do.

Transport committee  Yes. Just to give you a quick example, Nova Scotia reviewed 39 P3 schools in 2010. That review revealed that “the terms of service contracts are not adequate to ensure public interest is protected”. They also claim there is no child abuse registry or criminal record check of subcontractors.

Transport committee  For those of us who are concerned about the climate crisis, and acting urgently on it, the model the CIB is engaging in is contradictory to those aims, because of the increased costs. There is also the likelihood that it will create fewer jobs, because of the length of the projects.

Transport committee  I'm not an expert on broadband either, but it gets back to the general point of publicly built and operated projects being more cost-effective and better for communities.

Transport committee  You can cherry-pick from any set of examples on any issue. The evidence is clear that, on the whole, these projects cost more, deliver less and remove democratic control.

Transport committee  I think the Auditor Generals in B.C. and Ontario have been clear on this point. The evidence is there.

Transport committee  Well, in my primary area of work around the climate crisis I think about this quite a bit. We've had decades of delay and inaction at the federal level in the face of the climate crisis. It happens in the context of the CIB looking at P3s and privatization, when the P3 and privatization projects that come along with them take so much longer at a time when the urgency of the climate crisis just doesn't allow us to take as long as we feel we want to take.

Transport committee  It gets back to what I was talking about earlier concerning the general support for neo-liberal economics. Privatization is part of it, as are deregulation and free trade, and all of these together have led to the climate crisis, the economic inequality we're facing, the inequalities of race and the various intersecting crises we're facing.

Transport committee  I think the simple answer, in terms of how to make the most of public funds for infrastructure spending, is to stop engaging in P3s and privatization. As I outlined earlier, P3s and privatized projects cost billions of dollars more. If you want to save money, stop doing it.

Transport committee  The problem is that they don't. What happens is the private sector gets the reward, and the communities bear the risk. What we've seen in our fundamentally unjust system is that, just to look at the pandemic, billionaires have gained $3.9 trillion, and workers have lost $3.7 trillion globally during the pandemic, and this historic transfer of wealth to the 1% is an indictment of this neo-liberal model that privatization is a key part of.

Transport committee  I don't agree with the premise that the CIB continuing down the road of privatization and P3s is a foregone conclusion. When the idea was originally announced, it was rooted in public financing, and it could and should be again, as some of the evidence I shared today has highlighted, and there's plenty more out there from many reputable organizations.

Transport committee  It's an important question. I think part of it is also about asking who these projects are profitable for. They're certainly not for the local communities, as we've seen from the reports by the Auditor General. I live in Ottawa. For those people who don't live in Ottawa, you might not know that for quite some time the P3 for the light rail transit here was basically a bad punchline for pretty much everyone in Ottawa, because of the lack of accountability and democratic oversight and the cost overruns, and because of the fact that it took well over a year past deadline to move forward at stage 2.

Transport committee  I think not, if it's continuing down the road of P3s and privatization. What we need to keep in mind is that fundamentally privatization isn't part of the solution. It's a central part of the problem. Also, the deeper problem is neo-liberalism, which is that toxic mix of privatization, yes, but also deregulation, so-called free trade, which has devastated communities.

Transport committee  [Inaudible—Editor] and the damage to the public sector that will last for decades—

Transport committee  The pandemic has really laid bare the damages of decades of gutted public services and—