Former Alberta Investment Management (AIMCo) chief executive Leo de Bever is skeptical the federal government can attract foreign investment in critical Canadian infrastructure projects.

In an interview on BNN, de Bever, who’s now the chairman of energy service company Oak Point Energy, said foreign capital may prove disinterested in investing in many of the projects coveted by the Trudeau government.

“I don’t think that’s the first place that they’d be looking for,” he said. “The kind of people I talk to about foreign investment want to invest in our resources because they want security of supply [for] their own economies. I don’t think you’re going to get too many people excited about building roads in Canada.”

De Bever said Canadian attitudes toward paying for public infrastructure are at times diametrically opposed to the cash-flow needs of private equity.

“The prevailing wisdom in Canada is still that roads and sewage and so on should be free, and unfortunately infrastructure costs, so it has to earn a return,” he said. “The question is how do you allocate the cost of that infrastructure and if you’re not willing to charge for it, or not charge enough, then you’re not going to attract very much private capital: It’s that simple.”