P3s are the best solution? Prove it

We get what we deserve. Muskrat Falls? Yes, unfortunately. We wrote a few letters, and talked about it endlessly on the open-line programs, but we did nothing to really challenge the project, to demand answers, to stop or delay the process.

And we got what we have today — a perpetual reminder of our apathy. The price we will eventually pay cannot be measured solely in dollars, but also in the resultant cost of what may well be a fiscally and emotionally bankrupt province, incapable of supporting life as we have come to know it.

We are headed in the same direction with P3s, or publicprivate partnerships.

Within weeks of government’s announcements that they would proceed with the Corner Brook hospital and long-term care facility as P3s, the Liberals just announced a “value for money assessment” to determine whether a prison might work using the same process. Waiting in the wings are new courthouses and mental health-care facilities.

All of this at a time when the same government has found it necessary to tax everything from a sneeze to a smile.

What has suddenly changed from the one extreme to the other? Did we suddenly hit the Liberal Lottery?

Well, no, we didn’t hit the lottery, but someone did! To the extent that we blindly accept P3s as a cure-all, we are indeed paying out lottery winnings, in the form of our tax dollars, to the big consulting and contracting firms that promote this form of non-discipline. If we can’t afford it, we should not be getting it, at least not as P3s.

Don’t get me wrong. I want all of the foregoing as much as anyone. I have actually written letters to the editor on the need for such facilities. But build them in steps or stages, as we are able to afford them. Government wants the biggest and the best, and they want it now! This is a recipe for total disaster, and the Liberals have bought the consultants’ bill of goods, hook, line and sinker.

Do P3s have to be almost 50 per cent more costly than those done by government? Well, the tendency in business, when bidding on a project, is to ensure that all risks are covered. When the private business partner provides the design, finance, building, operation and maintenance of the asset, as well as the related services to government, one can well imagine the potential risks (real or perceived) that the business wants fully covered. This built-in risk coverage factor, combined with multiple consultancy and administrative fees that would otherwise be provided inhouse by government, are the real contributors to ballooning bid costs for P3s.

Meanwhile, government insists that the release of any bid information prior to acceptance and signing would in some way undermine the bid process. Here’s Transportation Minister Al Hawkins: “We will release the full results of the value-for-money when a successful proponent has been identified and the contract has been awarded.” That is doublespeak for “Please don’t ask what we are doing with your tax dollars.”

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, then I must be a Newfoundlander! If that makes you angry, then maybe you will let your voice be heard now, as opposed to waiting until it is too late (again). If we allow even one of the P3 projects to be signed, or even agreed to in principle, before we receive full disclosure of all costs, and related commitments, then we are indeed a Newfie joke.

When both government and big business are in bed together to spend the same tax dollars, for the same purpose but with totally different motivations, who is looking out for the taxpayers interests? Certainly neither of them.

At a minimum, government should establish an autonomous board to review all “successful” P3 bids, prior to approval and signing, and to report to the public, within 45 days, on the cost differential between the successful bid and the projected cost if government itself had completed the project. No detailed bid information would be disclosed during the process, and the board would publicly recommend acceptance or rejection on the basis of its findings.

A formal 45-day public evaluation process would follow, prior to government’s final decision. If both government and the contractor are confident in their project and its benefits to the public, there should be no objection to such a public evaluation.

This is a recipe for total disaster, and the Liberals have bought the consultants’ bill of goods, hook, line and sinker.

Dave Randell Mount Pearl