Sask sticking with P3 schools
REGINA — The provincial government is pressing ahead with its plan to build nine new joint-use schools through a public-private partnership (P3), despite Wednesday’s announcement that Alberta has killed the funding approach for its latest school builds project.
SaskBuilds president Rupen Pandya maintains that the situation is “very different” here in Saskatchewan, and that government will continue its “due diligence” to ensure P3s are the best deal for this province.
When it announced the new schools in October, the Saskatchewan Party trumpeted Alberta as one of the country’s big P3 school success stories, having built 40 schools and saved $240 million.
But the latest instalment in the Alberta project saw only one bidder come forward, rather than the three needed to ensure P3 funding remained competitive.
When the lone bidder offered a price tag of $14 million more than the public sector, government decided to drop the P3 model and go with a traditional build.
According to Pandya, preliminary sounding of the market in Saskatchewan isn’t showing “the same concerns that there are in Alberta,” for a few reasons.
Firstly, Alberta presented bidders with complete, detailed designs, whereas Saskatchewan is getting input from school divisions and students and handing over “indicative designs,” which “allow the market to apply maximum innovation.”
Secondly, Saskatchewan is new to P3 schools, while Alberta is “a victim of its own success,” Pandya said.
“A lot of teams didn’t bid (in Alberta), because the team that did stay in had so much success in previous bundles.”
That meant other companies figured the lone bidder would win again, “so the competition dropped out,” he said.
That in turn led to a negative price comparison — which just goes to show that the “due diligence process worked,” Pandya said.
“We always said we would do market sounding prior to procurement to ensure we know there’s a minimum of three teams going into the (bid).”
However, the NDP is calling on the provincial government to follow in the footsteps of Alberta and scrap the P3 schools projects. Education critic Trent Wotherspoon maintains that P3s are not right for schools.
“They cost more. It can take a lot longer to get shovels in the ground,” Wotherspoon said in a statement.
“It’s great that the government of Alberta decided that paying more isn’t right for Alberta families. Now the Saskatchewan government needs to do the same.”
Wotherspoon also questioned comments made by Dan Florizone, the deputy minister of education.
In a Standing Committee on Public Accounts meeting Tuesday, in a discussion about capital funding for schools, Florizone said school divisions “could seek a number of revenue options” for capital funding — including looking to municipalities.
It was important, he said, for school divisions across the province to “think and act as one.”
The government declined to offer Florizone for an interview to clarify his comments, but issued a statement saying he was making “observations about how health regions finance their capital projects — not school projects.”
That’s despite the fact Florizone specifically mentioned the province’s 28 school divisions.
In drawing a parallel between education and health, Florizone said the health sector has “approached municipalities and said, ‘We’d like this to be a true community support.’
“What I’m saying is that the (school) divisions themselves, as defined under legislation, could seek a number of revenue options,” Florizone said.
“They could look to the municipalities. And what I’m also suggesting is that there is nothing inherent in their legislation suggesting that they couldn’t act as a health authority in terms of financing.”
In a statement, Wotherspoon likened that approach to “dumping costs onto already strained municipalities.”