Dive Brief:

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made what The Globe and Mail called "an unprecedented appeal" Monday for billions of dollars in infrastructure investments at a financial summit in Toronto.
• The success of Trudeau's economic plan, reported The Canadian Press, relies on massive infrastructure investment, and those private dollars can help leverage public funds toward his goal of state-of-the-art green infrastructure and transit projects.
• The Canadian government has already announced that it will establish an infrastructure bank, started off with a $35 billion government investment. It has also created the Invest in Canada Hub to attract more foreign investment and will potentially lift some restrictions on those investments in the future.

Dive Insight:

Canada has consistently set an example for infrastructure planning and funding, and it even scored a mention in Brendan Bechtel's November USA Today op-ed piece. In the editorial, Bechtel touted the importance of public-private partnerships in tackling America's infrastructure problems and pointed to Canada's Infrastructure Ontario as an example of how to model them. In August, officials announced that Canada's new Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, the first phase of a nationwide $93 billion infrastructure financing plan, would provide approximately $1.1 billion for infrastructure projects in Ontario, paving the way for a total of $2.3 billion for the province.

Canadian pension funds, according to Reuters, are some of the most enthusiastic infrastructure investors, but they have concentrated their efforts in overseas markets rather than in Canada to avoid the risk of new construction and to take advantage of proven, profitable assets. This does not mean, however, that pension funds have abandoned Canada. Quebec pension fund manager Caisse de depot is building a $5.5 billion light-rail system through Montreal and just this week announced they had whittled potential bidders down to five.  

Unlike its previous public-private partnership projects, Canada is trying to attract investors through a promise of returns on equity investment, similar to what President-elect Donald Trump has proposed in the his $1 trillion plan. The proposal would see the private sector earn an 82% tax credit on its equity investment, plus collect revenue from the fee-based projects eligible for the program. Like Trudeau, Trump said the private funds would allow the government to spend more money on other infrastructure projects that are not as profitable for investors.