Conservative partisan politics

Editor: Re: Infrastructure Bank terrible Liberal idea. May 15, Daily Courier.

Dan Albas swings a big stick at the federal Liberal government’s new $35 billion Infrastructure Bank, echoing interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose’s claim that the bank is “a bad idea.”

However, upon examination of the proposal, in the end, it only appears to be a bad idea because it’s not a Conservative idea. This use to be the kind of program that Conservatives would propose and support. What happened?

The previous Harper government was particularly fond of public private partnerships, and the government’s plans for using the bank to leverage private investment for large fee-paying infrastructure projects fits this criterion perfectly.

Albas says the $35 billion will be lost to us. However, this amount is to capitalize the bank, which is needed to facilitate the financial structure of the bank, to be able to leverage larger amounts of private funds into the public domain for public projects. As a financial critic, Albas should know this, and if he does then he is misrepresenting merely for partisan purposes.

Infrastructure project funding may be in the Okanagan or it maybe somewhere else; we’re all part of Canada. We have to make the pitch for ours.

But Albas rightly points to the challenges he will have in securing that funding. As an opposition member, he has many more hurdles to jump in presenting his riding’s case for needed funding, as every MP across the land willing be busy at the same time trying to secure the same funding.

Albas’s past government experience has been only in sitting government. But now he has a growing awareness of the limits when you’re in opposition, not in government.

Albas says he’s concerned that the money is borrowed in the first place, and will be used solely to subsidize a rate of return to private investors. This is blatantly misrepresenting facts. He forgets to tell us we get new infrastructure to use, which generates enough fees to offer a rate of return to investors. Gee whiz, sounds just like any other private entrepreneurial enterprise.

I know the NDP don’t like the idea of rich bankers making profits, but Conservatives, on the other hand, should know better.

As for the $100 million threshold, this applies to bank-financed projects only. All other forms of public funding will continue unabated, but Albas seems to be interested in fanning flames of fear that we in this region will not qualify. This is unfair, unproductive and merely partisan politic. Is this an indication that the Conservatives have now abandoned sound fiscal policy for antiestablishment populism?

Jon Peter Christoff, West Kelowna