Senator Cardozo: Thank you, folks, for being here. I’ll start with Mr. Pierce and Mr. Detchou from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. I hear you asking for credible regulatory certainty. When you look at sections 21, 22 and 23, which allow the government to override a list of acts, do you have concerns? What are your thoughts about that?

Mr. Khosla, I note you are concerned about oversight of projects once they are under way. I noticed one of the issues you mentioned was enabling infrastructure, and sometimes I hear that as a euphemism for wanting the government to spend large sums of money on roads, pipelines and ports. If that’s the case, I understand. Would you support deficit spending to obtain that?

Normally, I hear the private sector calling on the government to throw down the chains of regulation and just let things happen. What I’m hearing from you is this: “No, no, no. Let’s get things organized first, let’s decide on some standards, let’s choose some processes and achieve some clarity on what we want.” Do you think we’re moving too fast here? Are you concerned that down the road we’ll end up in court on some of these issues?

Mr. Jansa: From my perspective, to colleagues here, it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s the cart before the horse. We’re talking about a laudable goal of compatible requirements. We have no structures established in the act to achieve that. This is where I say that it needs to be expert-driven, it needs to be consensus-based and it’s public and private. None of that is represented in the bill.

There is no section that speaks to standards, which is — in many ways — the reason why we have many interprovincial trade barriers.

Mr. Pierce: Business is looking for government — and the process around an approval — to be predictable and credible. So, to have that, and yet having an unknown path to reach that end — because of competing regulations between levels of government — we think is problematic. So to answer your question, we think any initiative like this would have to override certain acts. It would have to take that into consideration in some way.

Again, this is a little bit beyond the business view, but that process is spoken to very clearly in the act: there are still pieces that must be followed, and those overriding principles would occur when there is some form of a process that would be communicated to the public.

Again, it’s about signalling to the business community what that process is so that the business community can play. If it’s going to be dynamic and change every time, that will limit investment.

Senator Cardozo: You don’t think that process is sufficiently defined at this point?

Mr. Pierce: No, and I don’t know that it could be in legislation at this stage. That’s certainly not meant to be a criticism. We feel this is an important step to arrive at that clarity on how that is actually going to work, and the faster the better.

Mr. Khosla: I liked where you started, which was the oversight part. We think that strategy has to be moving now, with stealth, discipline and focus. We think there are many projects out there that can go, and they need to move quickly in light of where we are as an economy and in light of where we are in terms of our global presence.

Natural gas is a key no-brainer. We have this basin out in Western Canada that’s so rich, and no other country in the world would be sitting and just watching it potentially chug along the way we are. Generally, we think projects should move faster; that is the simple answer.

To the second part of your question, on enabling infrastructure, there are two parts in our report on that. The first is — you’re right, broadly. Are there things that will cause roadblocks? For example, the Ring of Fire. We have been talking about it forever, right? If we start to unlock that, if the critical minerals actually come out, where do they go? If you’ll notice, the Port of Vancouver is kind of congested, so that’s one element of that. That should be maybe the number one project on the list. I’m not sure. That is something we have put in our report.

The second part is not to look at projects statically. In other words, most of these projects have many different elements. The example I can give you is the transmission line to a mine. Oftentimes, we only review one part of that.

As far as the final point, no, not deficit spending. I talked off the top about all these financing agencies. They are flush with cash. They should be aligned. They should put the capital stacks together and start to move. We even have investment tax credits. I do not believe there is a lot more spending required unless there is a special project that takes billions. TMX would be one of those examples, but the money is there. Let’s get going and then attract the capital back in this country. I mean, the Germans came with $1 billion a couple of years ago, but we couldn’t do anything with it. That’s what we’re talking about.