Toronto budget vote – January 17

1. Toronto budget vote – January 17 • Both the mayor and his opponents claimed victory. • Ford “lost the support of centrist councillors whose votes unravelled roughly $19-million worth of cuts.” • “the mayor claimed victory, arguing that the core of his budget – $330-million in cuts and efficiencies, a 2.5-per-cent tax increase and nearly 1,200 layoffs – remained intact. ‘We are spending less money this year than last year, that is absolutely unheard of,’ he said. ‘We are starting to change the culture here at city hall.’” • From Globe and Mailcoverage. • Toronto Star, “What got cut in Toronto’s 2012 budget”

2. Canada’s Largest Infrastructure Projects (includes many P3s) • Annual report from ReNew Canada: The Infrastructure Magazine. • Top 100 projects website • A pdf of the report. • Article from ReNew Canada. • Globe and Mailcoverage. • Wider discussion of the transit situation by Marcus Gee in the Globe.

3. Research Essay Due Date: • Section C (Wednesdays): March 14 • Section B (Mondays): March 19 Assignment has been posted to course website.

4. The Emergence of P3s in Canada Week 3

5. Defining P3s • From the CCPPP: “A cooperative venture between the public and private sectors, built on the expertise of each partner, that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of resources, risks and rewards.”

6. Defining P3s • From PPP Canada: “P3s are a long-term performance-based approach for procuring public infrastructure where the private sector assumes a major share of the responsibility in terms of risk and financing for the delivery and the performance of the infrastructure, from design and structural planning, to long-term maintenance.”

7. P3s in Canada • “A number of projects with P3 characteristics began to emerge across Canada in the 1980s, but it was not until the mid-1990s that P3s really began to take hold” (Vining and Boardman, 2008: 10).

8. P3s in Canada Loxley (2011: 40) argues that the “introduction of P3s in Canada has been marked by three distinctive phases since the early 1990s” • 1990s - “a neo-liberal effort to reduce the size of the public sector” • Late 90s - early 2000s - “a rationale based on the supposed economic and financial superiority of P3s over conventional approaches” • Since late 2006 - “the re-emergence of a purely political rationale”

9. PPP Canada Inc. • In 2007, the federal government, led by Stephen Harper, created a crown corporation, PPP Canada Inc to encourage the use of P3s. • PPP Canada became operational in 2009.

10. PPP Canada’s Mandate • “PPP Canada’s mandate is to improve the delivery of public infrastructure by achieving better value, timeliness and accountability to taxpayers, through P3s.” • “That is to say, PPP Canada was created to deliver more P3s by leveraging incentives, demonstrating success, and providing expertise; and to deliver better P3s by promoting P3 best-practice, and capacity-building.”

11. P3 Canada Fund PPP Canada administers the P3 Canada Fund. • “The P3 Canada Fund was created to improve the delivery of public infrastructure and provide better value, timeliness and accountability by increasing the effective use of P3. The P3 Canada Fund is the first infrastructure funding program, anywhere in Canada, which directly targets P3 projects.” • “PPP Canada works with provincial, territorial, municipal, First Nations, federal and private partners to support greater adoption of public-private partnerships in infrastructure procurement.”

12. Discussion questions for next week: • In the Canadian context, what types of projects have utilized P3s? • According to Loxley, what are the main problems that have been encountered in the Canadian experience with P3s?