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“I disagree that things have been slow, just to be blunt,” Lavallée said. “I think we made a lot of progress in the first year. Generally speaking in infrastructure development, these projects take a long time to get together — they are very often very large, very complex, and require a lot of due diligence.”

We’re not going to rush it out the door

The bank also released a memorandum of understanding on Thursday to invest in a geothermal project in Richmond, B.C. for an amount that is still being negotiated.

His work at the bank is a core piece of Trudeau’s infrastructure ambitions, in which the Liberal government has promised to spend as much as $190 billion over 12 years to expand roads, air terminals, telecommunications lines and other infrastructure.

That spending program, similar to the CIB, has been criticized for delays in its early stages. Finance officials were forced to pushback billions in spending to later years, which in turn weakened the economic output of the spending plans.

The bank, first established by Trudeau in 2017 but only operational around mid-2018, is mandated to spend in four main areas including green energy, public transit, trade and telecommunications. It is premised on an untested notion: the bank will use government dollars to invest in projects that the private sector finds too risky, in turn lowering the risk of projects and attracting those very investors to the table.

Lavallée said concerns over delays miss the behind-the-scenes work carried out by the bank. He has been in discussions with stakeholders in 140 different projects across the country and 25 of those negotiations have reached “advanced stages.”