National Post (National Edition)
Infrastructure bank finds ‘support’
TORONTO • The Canada Infrastructure Bank is a centrepiece of the federal government’s highly touted $180-billion, 12-year infrastructure plan. But for now at least, it’s also one of the more mysterious.
In a speech in Toronto Tuesday, Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, described the bank as one of the “innovative solutions” that is needed to come up with ways to finance construction of the myriad of transportation, environmental and social infrastructure projects the federal government wants to build coast to coast.
The bank was announced in the fall fiscal update as part of a package of infrastructure announcements, including a pledge to boost Ottawa’s commitment to $180 billion from an earlier promise of $125 billion.
Sohi told a gathering of the Canadian Council of PublicPrivate Partnerships the bank will foster private-sector involvement in infrastructure development through several tools, such as providing loans, offering loan guarantees and investing its own equity in infrastructure projects. It will also provide advice and expertise on best practices to project developers. The legislation creating the bank will be announced in the 2017 federal budget.
“P3s will continue to play a critical role in the delivery of infrastructure across this country,” Sohi said.
Sohi, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other cabinet ministers met with several big global institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds in Toronto on Monday to discuss the merits of Canadian infrastructure as an asset class.
Sohi told reporters the government received a “considerable vote of support” from the global investors for the proposed bank during that Monday meeting. But the investors did have some questions.
“Obviously there are a lot of questions about the design of the bank, the governance of the bank, and the broad details around it, which we will be figuring out as we progress on this,” Sohi said.
Sohi was then asked how the government responded to those questions. “The object of the session (Monday) was to listen to the private sector,” he said. “That discussion will definitely help us design the bank in a way that is responsive and help us achieve the goals that we want to achieve which is to build more infrastructure and create more jobs and infrastructure for Canadians.”
Yet is there a need for a bank to do this when other government agencies around exist, such as PPP Canada?
John McBride, chief executive of PPP Canada, said in an interview that the bank will have a different role than agencies such as his, which is responsible for deploying the federal P3 Canada Fund.
“We’re a procurement and contracting agency,” he said. “We’ll see how the bank evolves. I completely support the objective because it’s the same objective that we have. We both want to see more private-sector involvement in the main.”