P3s redux

Murray Dobbin again slams the Campbell government for the waste and secrecy associated with its P3 projects:

Public-private partnerships persist in B.C. and are set to expand despite the fact that the rationales for them have, one by one, been debunked. Early on, supporters touted them as a way to help debt-conscious governments get liabilities off the books. Yet there is little difference between taxpayers servicing the interest on a government loan and paying a yearly fee to a P3 contractor — who uses it to pay off its loan. It's all taxpayers' dollars.

However, there is one important distinction: the P3 fee is always higher, for the simple reason that governments can borrow money at a lower rate than private companies. On a big project, that can mean tens of millions of dollars in extra costs. As for keeping debt off the books, even the free-market International Monetary Fund has severely criticized governments for this accounting trick, demanding that they begin treating yearly P3 payments as debt and not operating costs...

One of the most serious problems with P3s and PBC's promotion of them is that the whole process is shrouded in secrecy — rationalized by so-called “commercial confidentiality.” Even publicly elected officials don't get to see the contracts.

“P3s allow megaprojects to be imposed upon local communities without any meaningful consultation,” Richard Neal said. “Even rudimentary public scrutiny of projects is prohibited until the contracts are signed, and by then it's too late to stop them. Look at the RAV, St. Paul's Hospital, the Highway 1 [expansion], and the twinning of the Port Mann [Bridge] — none of them would be approved as conventional projects without a lot more public oversight.”

Unfortunately, despite consistently strong writing on the subject both by Dobbin and by others covering the issue for the Tyee, the dangers of P3s don't appear to have broken into the mainstream media to any great extent. And it may well take a lot more public knowledge of the B.C. Liberals' apparent ideological commitment to inefficiency and unaccountability to ensure that they don't receive any more opportunity to impose more unnecessary costs on the province.