Blissful Ignorance: another Conference Board report on P3s
Posted by Toby Sanger under P3s.
August 21st, 2013
Comments: 2
The Conference Board of Canada has produced another report on P3s, funded by the federal and provincial P3 agencies and the Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships (CCPPP).
Unfortunately and sadly predictably, it’s another exercise in largely blissful ignorance promoting P3s, while glossing over or ignoring their major problems.
For instance, there’s no mention of the problems with the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), which led to the CEO of SNC-Lavalin resigning and being charged with fraud, along with former Harper appointee Arthur Porter, the MUHC’s director general.  There’s no mention of the extraordinary costs associated Ontario gas plant scandal, which was effectively a P3 and led to the resignation of former Premier Dalton McGuinty. There’s no mention of fiascos with P3s in the UK (except very brief mention of Metronet) nor of the UK Conservative governments review of P3s that led to some reform of their approach.
I don’t necessarily fault the authors. To their credit, they interviewed me as background for this report more than 18 months ago and seemed aware of many of the problems with P3s,  but in the year and a half of editing since, many of the criticisms have been glossed over or fallen by the wayside as it was prepared for publication.
While the Conference Board is of course independent, I can’t help but note that the author of their previous report promoting P3s (See my critique of it: The Conference Board on P3s: Biased and Superficial), which was also funded by the P3 agencies and CCPPP,  subsequently went on to a job as director of economics with AECON, which is a major player in the Canadian P3 market.  While the report bibliography lists some publications critical of P3s (including by me), there’s no mention of the excellent studies critical of P3s by professors John Loxley at University of Manitoba, Matti Siemiatycki at U of T , or Aiden Vining and Anthony Boardman at UBC.
Irrespective of any potential bias, the problem is the Conference Board bases its analysis and conclusions on the highly superficial value-for money (VfM) reports prepared by P3 agencies — and so it doesn’t provide any additional objective information about whether P3s actual provide any real benefit (except to the private companies and financiers involved).
“Public sector comparators won’t do you much good anyways, because I can make the public sector comparator as bad as we want to, in order to make the private sector look good.â€
Comments
Comment from Purple Library Guy
Time: August 21, 2013, 10:06 pm
Well said. It’s a travesty that P3 supporters can still raise their heads after all that’s happened since they were first introduced.
Comment from Moira Law
Time: August 22, 2013, 5:18 pm
Doesn’t anyone read Jane Jacobs? P3s are, according to her, monstrous hybrids, rather like the mafia and seem to achieve similarly happy results. She wrote all this many years ago.
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