One more provincial Auditor General has come out swinging at public private partnerships (P3s). Last week New Brunswick’s AG released a report on two P3 schools that had been announced by the NB government in 2008. New Brunswick Auditor General Kim MacPherson joins public auditors in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia who have [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Privatization, P3s & public services'
New Brunswick Auditor General latest to blast public private partnerships
January 15th, 2012 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services
Is it P3s or the 3 Stooges? A tale of two cities
November 30th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services
For those of us not fond of the expensive and secretive public private partnerships (P3s) promoted by the BC and Canadian governments, the last few weeks have been entertaining. In one community voters rejected the use of a P3 water system. In another community the federal government refused a P3 after the city had spent [...]
Tags: Abbotsford·Ed Fast·PPP Canada
The Union of BC Municipalities Convention: a potpourri of policy
October 2nd, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Economy, Employment & labour, Environment, resources & sustainability, Housing & homelessness, Municipalities, Privatization, P3s & public services, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes, Transparency & accountability
For people who follow local policy issues the annual meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) is always chock-a-block with material. Last week’s meeting in Vancouver, which saw hundreds of mayors and councilors along with most of the Cabinet, much of the BC opposition and dozens of groups selling both items and ideas, was [...]
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Public private partnerships under increasing attack in the UK
August 19th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
While British Columbia continues to invest billions in public private partnerships(P3s), a UK Parliamentary Committee today told its government to “wean itself off the practice.” The Treasury Select Committee found: We have not seen clear evidence of savings and benefits in other areas of PFI projects which are sufficient to offset this significantly higher cost of [...]
Deconstructing BC’s carbon neutral government
July 13th, 2011 · Marc Lee · Comments Off · Climate change, Privatization, P3s & public services, Provincial budget & finance
Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government [...]
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Hiding $5 Billion
June 23rd, 2011 · Marvin Shaffer · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services
A reporter from back East called me yesterday to ask about the B.C. Auditor General’s May report into a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority P3. As Keith Reynolds pointed out, the AG found that the actual costs of the P3 were much higher than what the Coastal Authority and Partnerships BC had said they would be. [...]
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Suspicion about private finance schemes growing in the UK
June 2nd, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 5 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
On May 16th British Columbia’s Auditor General published a report on Vancouver General Hospital P3 that raised serious doubts about public private partnerships in British Columbia. In the UK, where P3s have been around a lot longer, the doubts are getting even graver. Under P3s, or private finance initiative (PFI) as they are known in [...]
British Columbia Auditor finds costly failings in Province’s first hospital P3
May 23rd, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 3 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
A new report by British Columbia’s Auditor General has debunked nearly every benefit claimed so far for public private partnerships (P3s). The Auditor General’s report on a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCHA) project adds to earlier criticisms by his counterparts about failings in P3 hospital projects in Quebec and Ontario. The BC report, released on [...]
Reading the tea leaves in a Cabinet shuffle
March 15th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services
Figuring out what the changes in a Cabinet shuffle mean is a lot like reading tea leaves: you can find just about anything you can imagine. Christy Clark’s first Cabinet announced yesterday is no exception. That being said, there are some things that stand out as pretty strong likelihoods. First of all it looks like [...]
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How flipping equity in P3s boosts profits and ends up with the projects being run from Channel Islands tax havens
March 9th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 1 Comment · Privatization, P3s & public services
Just like good stilton cheese, public private partnerships (P3s) were imported to British Columbia from the United Kingdom. And like good stilton, in the UK P3s are starting to smell. In 2003, as part of its privatization agenda, BC’s government created Partnerships BC as a private company owned by the Ministry of Finance. Partnerships BC’s [...]
Tags: ABN Ambro·Bilfinger·John Laing·Macquarie·Partnerships BC
