Plans to use a BC government agency to ‘advise’ Nova Scotia on any future P3s is nothing more than a smokescreen by the MacDonald government.
That assessment comes from CUPE Nova Scotia President Danny Cavanagh, who says “Partnerships BC was basically set up by the right-wing government of Gordon Campbell as a phony agency to rationalize the use of public private partnerships in that province.
“Partnerships BC’s latest bit of trickery is to use so-called ‘value for money’ reports to estimate and compare the costs of developing public infrastructure through traditional public sector means versus P3s. CUPE research and other organizations have thoroughly discredited this method as not being fair or accurate,” says Cavanagh.
“This is the same Campbell government that was just told by the Supreme Court of Canada that ripping up the contracts of BC hospital workers six years ago - so he could contract out literally thousands of decent-paying, unionized jobs - violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” says Cavanagh.
“This is simply more smoke and mirrors from Rodney MacDonald who is desperately trying to come up with something to increase his government’s popularity with the people of Nova Scotia. Well, taking a page from the neo-liberal government of Gordon Cambell is not going to cut it,” he says.
Says Cavanagh, “A study conducted for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives by Simon Fraser University Professor Marvin Shaffer showed that BC taxpayers will have to pay an additional $220 million for the Sea-to-Sky Highway P3, a project that was given the blessing of Partnerships BC.”