The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that five years after the Canada Infrastructure Bank hired its first employee, the Crown agency is nearing a milestone, with almost $10-billion in investment commitments. The Globe's James Bradshaw writes that the CIB is starting to answer critics who have said it has been too slow to get off the ground. It added $2.5-billion in investment commitments in the fiscal year that ended March 31, bringing its cumulative total to $9.7-billion, according to financial results released this week. Forty-two of its commitments, totalling $9.3-billion, have financing in place and have completed due diligence. In the past year, the bank has more than doubled its cumulative deal volume. The government established the bank so that it could use that money to make early investments and favourable loans, with the aim of attracting private investors to new or stalled Canadian infrastructure projects that might otherwise be deemed too commercially risky, or that need large up-front investments. CIB committed $800-million to a battery storage project two years ago which attracted two new private-sector investments from renewable energy producer Northland Power and construction company Aecon.