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Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall advocated for the continued use of private-public partnerships (P3) during a campaign visit to Saskatoon on Friday.
P3 projects can take many forms. Most typically involve contracts where a private sector firm assumes more risk than they would under traditional procurements. For instance, a builder under a P3 often wouldn’t be able to recoup costs if prices for labour or materials rise during construction. The tradeoff is that the private partner gets a stable source of income in the form of fees paid over the contract life for operation or maintenance of the infrastructure.
Criticism of P3 projects tends to accuse them of costing more than traditional procurements. Others charge that P3s allow politicians to kick infrastructure costs down the road by several decades.
In Saskatoon Friday, Wall visited the site where the North Commuter Parkway Bridge is being built. The bridge is bundled together with the replacement Traffic Bridge in a P3 between Graham Construction and the city of Saskatoon.
Under Wall, the province has contributed $50 million for construction of the bridge. Speaking at the site, he said the P3 approach has allowed his government to make record infrastructure investments since coming to power.
“When the Saskatchewan Party was first elected in 2007, we inherited a massive infrastructure deficit from an NDP government that was content to let our schools, roads and hospitals crumble,” Wall said. “There is more work to be done but we’ve come a long way since then.”
The NDP has pledged to eliminate SaskBuilds if elected. The provincial Crown corporation was founded in 2012 with a mandate to oversee procurement. The New Democrats have referred to it as a “privatization ministry” for its promotion of P3 projects.
Wall said the NDP promise, if enacted, would put projects like the North Commuter Parkway at risk — along with the approximately 175 jobs the project is expected to generate at its peak.
