PM must come clean on costly new bank

The Opposition in Ottawa is drawing attention to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s costly infrastructure bank. And Canadians are scratching their heads trying to figure out what it’s about.

Is this a government boondoggle waiting to happen? Is our hard-earned money going to be handed over to big business? Are we getting best value for our money?

Trudeau needs to answer these questions and do more to sell Canadians on the issue — or shut the whole project down.

The Liberals technically have a mandate for this confusing proposal. It was in their platform: “We will establish the Canadian Infrastructure Bank to provide low-cost financing for new infrastructure projects.

“The federal government can use its strong credit rating and lending authority to make it easier and more affordable for municipalities to build the projects their communities need.”

Trudeau did win a mandate to go into “modest” deficits to fund infrastructure across the country. While his eventual tally far exceeded his pledge to incur no more than $10 billion annually, the basic gist of deficit spending to build infrastructure was backed by the voters.

However ,the people were expecting we’d be using public funds to build those projects. That’s the impression given by those quotes from the platform.

But here’s the new approach, as Tom Parkin explained it in a recent column:

“The Infrastructure bank would collect fare, fee and toll revenue when Canadians use infrastructure financed by the Bank — transit, roads, bridges, waterworks, etc. — and remit it back to the Bank’s private investors.”

Private funds are licking their chops at the prospects of getting a seven to nine per cent return from the feds. That’s the amount of money we could be shelling out to have private companies finance these projects instead of doing it with public cash — for less.

Meanwhile, Trudeau is ramming through this confusing new bank in an omnibus budget bill. The Opposition want him to break it out as separate legislation. They’re right.

Why the bait and switch from the campaign pledge? Why the sneaky legislation?

Trudeau needs to drop the secrecy, fess up to the people and get real public support for this bank. Or drop it altogether.