Transport committee  Quite the opposite. Based on the information we were provided by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, we came to the exact opposite assessment.

Transport committee  It's very difficult for me to assess that question, because that's all in the eye of the beholder. But in terms of comparison, I can compare my office's budget to the bank's. The bank's operating expenditures are about $41 million or $42 million this year for 74 employees, if I h

Transport committee  We asked for information from the Canada Infrastructure Bank about their projects, their portfolio and so on. We were provided with information that's almost exclusively already public. They cited confidential information of a commercial nature, but our office is entitled to rece

Transport committee  The cause of those disparities must first be taken into consideration. Are they caused by different needs? The disparities may be explained by needs and readiness varying from one province to another. However, if the needs are essentially the same from one province to another, b

Transport committee  Yes, it is a discrepancy that can be telling, but we should still take it with a grain of salt, as the program is only at its beginnings and the time frame is about a dozen years. It is possible, and even probable, that such discrepancies are related to the time frames of certain

Transport committee  Perhaps I misspoke. I was rather talking about 8,500 to 9,000 projects for which we don't have all the information. I cannot give you the value of those projects off the top of my head. Ms. Nahornick could perhaps give you information on that. Nora, do you know the...?

Transport committee  We use the definition that's used by Statistics Canada to define a government entity. There is no doubt that the Caisse de dépôt uses the funds entrusted to it by future pensioners in Quebec and is mandated to make these funds fructify or generate revenues, but it is still a gove

Transport committee  Let me first talk about lapses. Generally speaking, governments are funded by appropriations that work on an annual basis. If any department doesn't spend its allocated funding in a year, it usually lapses. It doesn't get spent. That is unless the government re-profiles that an

Transport committee  We looked at the projects. We got information from the banks themselves. We also looked at Statistics Canada's definition of “government entities”, and based on the funding for which there have been contracts signed, the two that you are referring to—Réseau express métropolitain

Transport committee  That's a very accurate summary.

Transport committee  Unfortunately, it's very difficult to quantify private sector involvement, because we had to rely on publicly available data. There's no evidence of significant private sector involvement, at least in the funding of these projects. There may be in some of the advisory services, b

Transport committee  Based on the first four years of operations of the bank, or almost four years, it would certainly seem that it behaves like a traditional government entity in providing grants or loans or whatever type of financing that is typical of government institutions without leveraging pri

Transport committee  Yes. We've asked the government repeatedly to provide us with that information. As we asked for details, more information that was missing progressively came to light. We are still missing information about [Technical Difficulty—Editor] to 9,000 projects out of the 53,000.

Transport committee  Yes. That is exactly it. We found that, generally speaking, federal infrastructure transfers increased. For example, it increased by $1 billion in 2018-19, but overall provincial infrastructure spending decreased by $733 million. Federal spending seems to have displaced at leas

Transport committee  I'm sure Nora can provide better information than I can.