FACE TO FACE: Are P3s a good way to build public infrastructure projects?
Last month, the federal government and the city of Coquitlam announced a public-private partnership to build an extra Evergreen Line station. It a was a good-news announcement all around: Commuters get an extra station and taxpayers don't have to fund the whole thing.
But my colleague opposite isn't a fan of P3s - contracts for private financing, management or even ownership of public services. I'm sure he's offering up the same old rhetoric the lefties have been spewing for decades: public services entrusted to private companies; tax dollars fuelling corporate profits; unionized workers being excluded - oh, the humanity!
Here in the real world, governments need P3s to fund and operate inadequate or failing public infrastructure such as roads, bridges, highways and hospitals. Federal, provincial and municipal governments are unable to address those inadequacies with tax resources.
According to provincial government statistics, P3s are expected to help meet 10 to 20% of B.C.'s capital infrastructure requirements and without these partnerships, this proportion of capital works would simply not be accomplished.
Let's look at some of the projects that might not have been built if it wasn't for the assistance of the private sector:
the Canada Line;
the Golden Ears Bridge;
the Sea-to-Sky Highway;
the Pitt River Bridge and Mary Hill interchange project;
the Surrey Memorial Hospital expansion;
and the Jim Pattison out-patient care and surgery centre.
And contrary to the left's rhetoric, P3s don't only benefit the friends and insiders of the government of the day. The Canada Line, for example, involved about 700 local contractors.
Even the provincial New Democrats understood the necessity for P3s in 1998 when they enacted amendments to the Municipal Act to facilitate P3 arrangements between local governments and the private sector. Prior to the amendments, the provisions of the Municipal Act permitted only a limited range of public private partnership arrangements, such as design-build.
If the NDP was able to put its archaic ideology aside in 1998, I think it's about time my colleague opposite did the same because P3s are good for our communities and good for taxpayers.
Andy Radia is a Coquitlam resident and political columnist who writes for Yahoo! Canada News and Vancouver View Magazine. He has been politically active in the Tri-Cities, having been involved with election campaigns at all three levels of government, including running for Coquitlam city council in 2005.
