Question Period Note: Investing in Canada Plan

Canadian Heritage manages two infrastructure programs under the Investing in Canada Plan, which will be the subject of an upcoming report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

• Through the Investing in Canada Plan, Canadian Heritage has made important investments in infrastructure projects across Canada to help make communities more inclusive and accessible.
• As of March 2020, Canadian Heritage has funded:
o 408 cultural infrastructure projects through the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund; and
o 9 community educational infrastructure projects in official language minority communities through the Development of Official-Language Communities Program.
• Detailed information on these projects has been shared with the Parliamentary Budget Officer to inform his report on the Investing in Canada Plan and will soon be posted on Infrastructure Canada’s website.

• The Investing in Canada Plan is the second phase of the infrastructure investment that began with Budget 2016.
o The first phase of the investment included $11.9 billion over five years to support public transit, green infrastructure and social infrastructure.
o The second phase, the Investing in Canada Plan, includes an additional $81.2 billion over 11 years, starting in 2017-18. Of this, $21.9 billion over 11 years is earmarked to support social infrastructure in Canadian communities. This investment includes close to $1.8 billion over 10 years beginning in 2018-19 for cultural and recreational infrastructure
• Infrastructure Canada leads on the Investing in Canada Plan, but infrastructure projects are funded by many departments with funds from the plan. Canadian Heritage is one such department, though our investments are small in comparison to others.
• Canadian Heritage delivers infrastructure funding through the Investing in Canada Plan through two programs: the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund and the Development of Official-Language Communities Program.
o The first phase of the investment (under Budget 2016) included $168.2 million over two years (2016-17 and 2017-18) for the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund.
o The second phase, the Investing in Canada Plan, includes an additional $300 million over 10 years for cultural infrastructure under the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund as well as $80 million over 10 years for community educational infrastructure in official language minority communities under the Development of Official-Language Communities Program.
• In February 2020, the Parliamentary Budget Officer requested information from Infrastructure Canada on the Investing in Canada Plan. As a participating department, Canadian Heritage provided detailed, project-level data on cultural and official language-related investments made under the Investing in Canada Plan.
• The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report will be published in June 2020, and is expected to highlight challenges in collecting project-level data from all parts of the Investing in Canada Plan.
• Canadian Heritage provided data on all of its approved projects as requested (spanning numerous categories such as project title, description, location, total project cost, amount of funding allocated, amount of funding paid out, forecasted start date and forecasted end date). Certain categories requested by the Parliamentary Budget Officer are not captured in Canadian Heritage’s Grants and Contributions Information Management System (such as the share of funding provided by other government departments, provinces/territories and municipalities) and therefore Canadian Heritage was not able to provide these data.

None