44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 26, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/26/23 10:24:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is nice to speak on behalf of the residents of Calgary Centre for the first time in this Parliament. I really appreciate the fact that we have a speech here today on the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
When I first ran in Calgary Centre in 2019, this was one of the key items on the agenda about one of the boondoggles that the government is actually foisting upon Canadians here. When I say boondoggle, I mean that literally: There are billions of dollars going into a slush fund that does not actually meet a requirement that was necessary in the Canadian economy at that point in time. I say that because I worked in the finance industry, and there were all kinds of infrastructure funds across Canada. The thing about those infrastructure funds is that they invest in actual projects that make sense to invest in. There is a return of capital.
The thing about infrastructure funds is that the return of capital associated with infrastructure is much lower than it is with any other investment. Most infrastructure is in long-lived assets. There is a lot of security involved with it, so it is not going away any time soon. It usually has a strong revenue profile associated with that infrastructure, whatever it is, whether it be new rail opportunities or new service opportunities that serve Canadians. Every one has to meet a mark, and that mark, of course, is mathematical. It is finance. Meeting a cost to capital that is very low is not hard to do. That is why so many infrastructure funds had funds available for investing in infrastructure in Canada. What we did not have available was boondoggle funds.
The government saw the opportunity to say we need some boondoggle funds in infrastructure in Canada. Every infrastructure fund in Canada said, “No, we don't. We don't need any more infrastructure. We're having enough difficulty finding good investment opportunities in infrastructure in Canada that we don't need another five billion bucks competing with us that is going to be slipping money under the table, frankly, to people on projects that don't make economic sense.” There are a lot of projects in Canada that make economic sense for these infrastructure funds.
Now, the issue about competition here is very prevalent. We need to realize that all these infrastructure funds had previously been set up because so many funds and so many investors in Canada recognized that Canada had fallen behind on its infrastructure investments and needed more infrastructure. They have been stalled under the government for one reason: The government is not understanding what actual projects need to get developed in Canada. It is a problem. The government's response to the economic malaise it has created in the economy is just to put extra billions of dollars into this instrument into the Canadian economy that does not have to meet the test of actual economic performance. It is a way around it. It is called “sustainable finance”.
My colleagues here all know that I spent a number of years, a couple of decades, in the finance industry. These things are mathematical at the end of the day. I noticed my colleague for Kingston and the Islands is over there winking at me because he always talks about finance, and I get to instruct him a lot.
The other point here, of course, is that all these things make sense. At the end of the day, sustainable finance is a way of playing games around where the return actually comes. The return does not come with these funds. It is a transfer of wealth from all these funds, from Canadians, into the pockets of insiders.
I can actually quote how many of these insiders are being paid in this boondoggle the Liberals have created. They have got insiders here. Despite the fact that they have hardly invested any money from this Canada Infrastructure Bank, they have collected in the last couple of years, 2020-21, almost $7 million in bonuses. Every employee of this boondoggle investment infrastructure bank actually gets bonuses, despite the fact that, at one point in time here, they had one investment. They had one investment with the provincial infrastructure system in Quebec; it was layered in structure behind the actual pension fund in Quebec. If colleagues want to talk about how that is performing for the Canadian people, I can go into that as well.
Then, in 2021-22, again, we see $7.7 million in bonuses to these Liberal insiders that have been appointed over there, transferring money from Canadians to their friends. It is a boondoggle of the highest order, investing in economic opportunities that do not exist and are not there. These are actually just ways of the government trying to paper over the fact that it has ruined the economy, so it will get some money being invested here into a sector where it no longer makes economic sense.
I spoke earlier about this whole concept of sustainable finance. There is no such thing. There is finance; it has always been sustainable. The whole thing about math is that the numbers have to go around at the end of the day. I see my colleague from Kingston and the Islands shrugging, as if to say, “Who cares if the numbers go around?” Well, they do have to go around. It matters a lot, because somebody is paying the price. In this case, the people paying the price are the taxpayers of Canada, and they are paying it to Liberal insiders.
I say congratulations to those who are on the inside of that and making a good living. Regular Canadians have seen what has happened to the economy as a result of the government's actions, which have ruined the economy. Investment has been leaving this country in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the last eight years, a significant egress of capital.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board does not even invest in Canada. It invests in foreign entities because it does not see the opportunity to invest in Canada. The organization of exporting and developing countries does not see the opportunity in Canada. It has Canada as the lowest-ranked growth country, out of its 40 members, over the next few decades. We are not talking about the next year or two. For the foreseeable future, Canada is seen as practically uninvestable, because of the government's policies.
I know it is a laughing matter for my colleagues across the way. It is not a laughing matter. Our entire economy depends on this. Being $1.3 trillion in debt, doubling the national debt, is not conducive to an economy that works. We have to get back to making that economy work.
What did the government do this year? It doubled down on the Canada Infrastructure Bank, but that is not working, so it put $15 billion into a new one: the Canada growth fund. It did this without much of a mandate and without it being passed. The government just said there was more money for another slush fund, which it needed to invest in projects that make no economic sense but make political sense for shovelling the money out the door a little more, collecting some friends and putting some money in everybody's pockets. It is all a circular economy, as they say, and it is a sustainable finance model. I suggest that it is sustainable for those stuffing money in their jeans.
For the rest of Canadians, it is not sustainable at all. It is a boondoggle. It is a way to make the government's friends rich at the expense of taxpayers. At the end of the day, Conservatives are here for Canadians, who pay their taxes and expect government to operate efficiently and effectively. Nothing of that order is happening here right now.
The opaque nature of every one of these funds and the investments they make is just obscene. There is no way we can continue on this course, with billions of dollars going into projects that the Liberals favour and have no foreseeable outcome at the end of the day. It is really just a way of spinning out and making Canadians more and more poor.
I will now refer to the concurrence report, because according to Yves Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, “despite the CIB's goal of leveraging private investment, projects to date have been exclusively funded by federal, provincial and municipal levels of government.” He is a man whom I greatly respect and have spent a lot of time discussing finance with. Therefore, there is no leveraging going on, as was the concept and the whole goal of this. That is because nobody believes this infrastructure bank is going to do anything good at the end of the day. It is just going to put money into the pockets of insiders. That is a shame, because there is so much more we could be doing with taxpayers' funds. We could be putting money into the needs of Canadians, but we are not doing that right now. We are running massive deficits, and this is part of that.
When people ask me back home what I would cut if I were in government, one of the first things I talk about is the Canada Infrastructure Bank, because it is a boondoggle. I would get rid of the boondoggles, first and foremost, before having to start making real cuts. The government will eventually have to make real cuts. Conservatives will be ahead of them. We will be cutting the boondoggles out and getting us back to balance in the Canadian economy.
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- Oct/26/23 10:36:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is good to hear that my colleague actually does pay attention to some of the developments happening outside her home province, including in my province of Alberta.
Irrigation, which first came up in the 1930s, was a way to open up the dust bowl, Palliser's Triangle, to make sure we had some irrigable land. The water that flows through the Rocky Mountain systems and all the way down actually gets stored. It was an inventive way of storing some of that water at that point in time. There has always been the opportunity to make sure there is economic progress. It has been made more viable, and if it were totally viable there would be infrastructure funds competing for it. What makes it more viable is the fact that agriculture is worth more because the government has punished farmers to the level where prices for crops have gone up.
Take a look at how that has affected Canadians at the food store. Canadians are paying far more for food because of the government's policies. Of course, we are going to need more food. We are going to need more of everything going forward, and it is going to cost about 10% more per year thanks to the government's inflationary policies.
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- Oct/26/23 10:38:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I read the Bloc Québécois' supplementary opinion, which says that this was a boondoggle.
It is something the federal government uses to dole out money and push the files it prioritizes in the province of Quebec. It is true, it is an economic instrument for the federal government. It is not something that is useful for balancing Canada's economy.
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- Oct/26/23 10:39:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me say very clearly that what I support is an independent pension plan for all Canadians, not the one the NDP keeps bringing to the floor of the House of Commons. It wants to manipulate at the political level what those pension plans invest in, which, frankly, would harm all Canadians in their retirement years. That is what is going to destroy the pensionability of Canadians, as opposed to what Albertans decide by themselves in a referendum about where they want their pension funds managed.
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- Oct/26/23 11:51:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague has spoken about the amount of money the government is spending with its cheque-book diplomacy, putting money in the pockets of their friends all the time, that far exceeds the amount the government has spent on programs for the NDP's confidence-and-supply agreement commitment to keep the government in power, like the dental plan. There is way more money going into this slush fund, and other slush funds, that the government has put together than in its supply agreement.
Would she consider withdrawing her support from her party's commitment to continue supporting the government because of the boondoggles she sees in this report?
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