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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Privatization, P3s & public services'
Suspicion about private finance schemes growing in the UK
June 2nd, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · 5 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
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
Tradable Water Rights – Coming to a province near you
March 5th, 2011 · Robin Roff · Comments Off · Environment, resources & sustainability, Privatization, P3s & public services
In January of this year, the BC government joined Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to become the fourth province to announce that it is considering creating tradable water rights as a way of curbing use and improving the efficiency of allocation. The announcement came as a vague reference to “water markets” in the latest draft of [...]
Tags: privatization·water
Lib leadership contender ill informed or misleading on P3s
January 12th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services
George Abbott has become the first of the BC Liberal leadership contenders to talk about the use of Public Private Partnerships (P3s) to deliver public facilities and services. Unfortunately, Abbott’s comments suggest either that he doesn’t understand how these projects are being imposed or he is misleading the interviewer. The government’s preferred P3 model is [...]
Tags: Liberal leadership race
Why incentive pay won’t fix education or health care
October 14th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 4 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services
It turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire. That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized [...]
Tags: Education·evaluation·health care·incentive pay·patient-focused funding·standardized testing
The U.K. having problems with its P3s
July 27th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services
Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program. Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program [...]
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Quebec Auditor General slams P3s in hospital project
June 11th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · Comments Off · Privatization, P3s & public services, Transparency & accountability
Quebec’s Auditor General has issued yet one more report slamming the use of public private partnerships (P3s). With P3s, private corporations finance and operate public facilities and services. The money they invest is more costly than money borrowed publicly. It is paid back to them, along with profits for the corporation, by governments over multi-decade contracts. [...]
Summer reading: two experts on privatization
May 20th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 3 Comments · Privatization, P3s & public services, Recommended reading, Transparency & accountability
Policy Note has asked CCPA Research Associates who contribute to the blog to suggest some ideas for summer reading. I am going to cheat a bit by suggesting two books. I am going to cheat even more by admitting I haven’t read one of them. I spend a lot of my time reading and writing [...]
Tags: Summer Reading
