Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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The premise of a P3 is that the public shoulders an outsize cost burden and shifts profits to the private sector on major projects — typically infrastructure. Deficit and debt hawks will tell you that the arrangement is a godsend, since it helps reduce public debt.
✏️ The promise and premise of public-private partnerships 🔗 View Highlight
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in the end, someone pays, and it’s always the user, which is to say the citizen, resident, or visitor who is left with higher costs and worse service. These projects often suffer from delays, exceed allocated budgets, and result in poor outcomes, all while lacking adequate democratic accountability.
✏️ The reality and consequences of these partnerships 🔗 View Highlight
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the true results of P3 projects are a brutal lack of transparency to the public, conflicting interests from partners, and less control by a city over massive infrastructure plans
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Ottawa’s LRT P3 was a “design-build-finance-maintain” contract — which is exactly what it sounds like. The private builder was responsible for designing, building, financing, and maintaining the LRT for a set price. In this model, the builder’s motivation lies in meeting the contract terms, ensuring the design, construction, and maintenance are done in a way that recoups their investment and maximizes profits. A perceptive observer may already discern the inherent risks in this setup.
✏️ The contract type and focus gives you all you need to know. Do these things and get your money. The business just has to figure out how to do that job as cheaply possible to maximize its profit. Nowhere in there is any concern for the common good, which is what would exist under a public endeavor. 🔗 View Highlight
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The P3 model’s fundamental problem lies in its lack of public-spiritedness and focus on the common good. It is profit-focused. Moreover, it is focused on maximizing profit. That is a recipe for designing, building, delivering, and maintaining poor, expensive projects and services. And no amount of recommendations, shame, or inducements will change its nature. The fundamental logic of the model ensures bad outcomes.
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municipalities got the worst of it because they were abandoned or overburdened by both federal and provincial governments. Combine that with the long-term centrist and right-wing war on the idea that governments can and should do things, and the relentless capitalist pressure on states to shovel contracts and subsidies their way, and you get the rise and dominance of P3s.
✏️ I bet this is not limited to a place like Canada. This conflation of circumstances is likely a common one. 🔗 View Highlight