The chair of the newly announced Ontario Infrastructure Bank (OIB) says the organization will focus on supporting housing and clean energy projects as it looks to bring more “prosperity” to the province.

Last month, the Ontario government announced it would spend $3 billion to create the OIB, a board-governed agency that is designed to attract investment to the province and support existing projects.

Brian Porter, a former Scotiabank CEO who is set to become chair of the OIB, said the infrastructure bank will look to support solutions to two of the province’s biggest challenges: housing and energy. 

“There's a dearth of facilities in the province, affordable housing, everybody knows about where we are in terms of housing, also energy generation capability,” Porter told BNN Bloomberg in a Monday television interview.

“If you look at the population increase over the last couple of years here in the province and extrapolate that, we're going to need more energy generating capability in the province.”

He said predicted “lots of challenges and lots of opportunity” in the course of the organization’s work.

“We want to do this thoughtfully and carefully, but with a degree of speed, and we're looking forward to it.”

‘PROSPERITY FOR ONTARIANS’

The organization’s objective is to use government funding to attract private investment and reduce the risk associated with large-scale projects. 

There is no public timeline for when the bank might announce its first investment.

It follows a similar model to that of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, which launched in 2017 with a $35 billion budget.

Since its launch, the national infrastructure bank has faced criticism for its inability to attract private capital and get projects completed quickly.

Porter said his agency will look to make short-term moves that can help Ontarians for the long-term.

“It's about prosperity for Ontarians when you get right down to it,” he said.

“We need to make investments today for economic growth and prosperity for citizens of Ontario five, 10, 15 years out. A lot of these are long-tail assets, which will have lives of 25 to 30 – maybe longer – years.”

ATTRACTING CANADIAN INVESTMENT

Ontario is already home to some of the biggest investment funds in the world: the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Brookfield Corp.

Porter hopes to use the infrastructure bank’s capabilities to attract some of these local investment groups.

“I think it's a great opportunity to set the stage, get some of the Canadian pension funds and possibly others involved in investments here in their own backyard,” Porter said.

With files from Bloomberg News