| Premier Ed Stelmach recently mused that he would support private-public partnerships, or P3s, to build new public schools in the province. Education Minister Ron Liepert has also come out in favour of the concept. However, critics of P3s say such a plan would be disastrous for the province and they question why Alberta, with its multi-billion dollar surplus can’t afford to build public schools itself.
D’Arcy Lanovaz, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Alberta, says the P3 model "doesn’t make a lot of sense."
"The P3 model has not served other jurisdictions very well," says Lanovaz. "In almost every circumstance P3s end up costing more…. It makes no sense whatsoever to allow a private consortium to take control of the schools, to build them, own them and operate them."
Lanovaz says the province has looked into P3s in other public projects such as the south Calgary hospital and the new courthouse in Calgary, and decided neither was a good financial option. "At each step of the way the P3 model seems to fail, and yet we’ve got a government that I would argue for ideological reasons wants to pursue what everyone else in the country seems to reject," he says.
Lanovaz says with a projected surplus of $7 billion this year the province can’t argue it’s too poor to build new schools. Not only could P3 contracts for schools cost taxpayers financially, Lanovaz says it would also mean losing public "transparency and accountability." He says when members of the public ask to see the terms of P3 contracts they’re told they can’t because it’s proprietary information. "We lose total transparency on what kinds of contracts are being signed, who they are being signed with, what specific length of time are we dealing with," says Lanovaz.
He believes the private company that owns the school would have wide-ranging control over what happens in its building. For example, the company could choose to have vending machines with pop and chips placed in schools despite the fact that many schools are removing the machines due to student health concerns.
Lanovaz says CUPE has been warning the government for years that it was creating an infrastructure deficit, and now it should come up with a comprehensive plan to resolve it without resorting to P3s. "They need to be serious about putting some resources into the system. Trying to fob off P3s as a solution, quite frankly, all that’s doing is transferring public funds to private sector friends at the expense of the taxpayer," he says.
Erika Shaker, director of the education project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a social and economic justice research institute, says Nova Scotia tried out P3s in public schools, and it was a major failure.
"Nova Scotia is just a really, really good example of what can go horrifically wrong. Essentially the province just signed a really lousy deal," says Shaker. "It became quite contentious and the matter went to an arbitrator and it was determined that, in fact, the public really got the wrong end of the stick." Shaker says the P3 "cost significantly more than they thought it would" and the government backed out of the deal and built the rest of the schools with public funds.
"There’s all sorts of fees that tend to be built into P3s. The whole point is to make money off of it," she says.
Shaker also says when public schools enter into a P3 arrangement they don’t have control over how the school is used after hours. For example, the private company can decide to rent the building out, preventing the school from using it for meetings or extra-curricular activities. She says a Nova Scotia parent told her that children weren’t allowed to hang art on the walls of their school because the private owner didn’t want it there.
Bill Moore-Kilgannon, executive director of the left-wing lobby group Public Interest Alberta, also questions why Alberta would embrace P3s. "Alberta is a very wealthy province and we have the ability to finance our own public infrastructure," he says. "The government has access to resources and to borrowing at way below rates that private industry does and all the studies show that it’s not going to save money at the end of the day. They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They need to be able to make a profit."
Moore-Kilgannon is also concerned that Alberta citizens wouldn’t be able to find out the terms of P3 contracts due to their being considered proprietary information. "It can’t be held up to real public scrutiny," he says. He agrees with Lanovaz that it was the government’s lack of planning that is forcing it to consider such options. "When it’s held up to the light it doesn’t make sense economically. It doesn’t make sense as public policy and it’s really just avoiding the discussion of the fact that the province has not been building schools to meet the needs of a growing population," says Moore-Kilgannon.
The Stelmach government has approved a $930 million P3 contract to design, build, maintain, operate and partially finance the Stoney Trail extension. However, no specific P3 deals related to public schools have been announced. |
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