The Ontario government has shelled out nearly $8-billion more to use public-private partnerships when building new infrastructure than it would have paid if it had simply built the projects itself.
That is the conclusion reached by Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk. She examined 74 projects – including hospitals, schools and light rail lines – that were built using private partnerships.
The warning is particularly timely: Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is planning to spend tens of billions over the next decade to build more infrastructure. And Ms. Lysyk argues the province could be saving money by building many of those projects itself rather than farming them out to private companies.
“Achieving value for money under public sector delivery would be possible,” she wrote. “Total costs for these projects could be lower than under [a private deal.]”
Photo: By Saffron Blaze (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons