Over the next several years, Canadian governments at all levels will undertake a multi-billion dollar attack on the so-called infrastructure deficit. Good infrastructure decisions will serve us for generations, expanding the quality and sustainability of our public services, improving productivity and increasing employment. Poor decisions will burden us for decades. We must also choose the right infrastructure, using financial and fiscal prudence while anticipating future technological and societal trends. If our priorities are wrong or if we pay too much, vital projects will be neglected.
All this is a tall order. In accomplishing it, the model of public procurement referred to as a public-private partnership—typically called a PPP, P3 or AFP, the latter based on the Ontario government variant called alternative financing and procurement—will be prominent. Heather Whiteside’s...
Michael Fenn is a former Ontario deputy minister and founding CEO of two Crown agencies (a local health integration network and Metrolinx). He is a director of the OMERS AC pension board and author of several recent published reports on future infrastructure investment. He has also published From Torture to Triumph: The Lost Legend of a Man Who Opened America—Guillaume Couture (Lulu Press, 2015). His comments in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations with which he is associated.
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