Regina Leader-Post

Gov’t judgment on big projects an issue

- GREG FINGAS Fingas is a Regina lawyer, blogger and freelance political commentato­r who has written about provincial and national issues from a progressiv­e NDP perspectiv­e since 2005. His column appears every Thursday. You can read more from Fingas at www.

Citizens trying to evaluate public policy choices often face a difficult task in determinin­g which issues should colour their perception­s of a government as a whole.

Any large organizati­on will include some inefficien­cies — and for those of us who recognize that large-scale political structures represent a necessary means to achieve social ends, it’s important not to overstate the significan­ce of minor or unavoidabl­e problems.

But at some point, government failings reach a scale where they can’t be accepted as a reasonable cost of doing public business. And that’s the point where the public needs to change course.

To date, the Saskatchew­an Party has mostly been able to classify its failings under the first category. Sure, the Wall government’s costly privatizat­ions and “lean” programs have made for dubious systemic choices. But it was at least possible to treat those as relatively small issues in the context of Saskatchew­an’s provincial government as a whole.

But now, two of the Wall government’s largest decisions are coming under the microscope: the billion-dollar choices around the carbon capture and storage scheme at Boundary Dam, and the impending Regina highway bypass. And the more we learn about the Saskatchew­an Party’s largest, costliest decisions, the more reason we have for concern.

When it comes to the $1.5-billion Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage project, we simply haven’t been told the truth about a project that was always hyped far beyond what was reasonable.

At best, carbon capture and storage represente­d a dodge rather than a solution for climate change; emissions from coal power are not eliminated, but instead redirected to exploit additional oil resources, which are then burned to create new emissions of their own.

Even if one thought that a worthy goal, though, the Boundary Dam project is nowhere near functional enough to meet the promises that accompanie­d its price tag. And the Wall government has responded with misinforma­tion, claiming victory based on the targets which have not been met while covering up its own informatio­n that the project includes serious design flaws.

What’s more, even as Boundary Dam fails at home, Wall is spending still more public resources selling that same failure around the world.

It’s hard to see an outcome worth hoping for if the options are for Wall’s sales pitch to fall flat, or for other jurisdicti­ons to be suckered into buying the same type of white elephant.

While we may have needed to see Boundary Dam go on stream to recognize the problems with it, the Regina bypass has been an obvious disaster from the moment it was announced. And it’s only getting worse as the Saskatchew­an Party has started detailing its plans.

The Wall government is proudly trumpeting that the bypass stands to be the largest infrastruc­ture project in the province’s history. But it’s hardly cause for celebratio­n that the price tag has more than doubled, particular­ly since additional costs for land remain to be tacked onto the current estimates.

Moreover, contrary to the normal excuse for P3 infrastruc­ture schemes, the Saskatchew­an Party is only extending the immediate safety risks, ignoring affected communitie­s who are asking for steps as simple as the installati­on of traffic lights to mitigate the danger. And even once it’s done, the bypass will do far less than it could to relieve safety concerns along the Highway 1 corridor.

In sum, it’s now beyond doubt that we can’t trust the Saskatchew­an Party’s judgment or honesty in its largest decisions. That leaves voters with an important decision of our own to make as to whether to allow it to keep handling our public resources.

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