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Ottawa (08 Oct. 2021) — In spite of problems that are serious enough for an Ottawa city councillor, Catherine McKenney, to label it a “P3 failure,” there have been no moves to make the management of the city’s light rail (LRT) P3 privatization scheme more accountable. A motion for an independent inquiry was defeated at the City’s transit commission, while an attempt to hold an emergency debate at city council was also blocked.
Instead, the city’s mayor plans yet another closed door meeting with the consortium running the P3 privatization scheme. That means more billable hours for any lawyers the city and the consortium bring to the meeting; however, based on past experience, it won’t help fix the problems.
Ottawa LRT P3 problems go beyond normal teething troubles
Since it was built, the P3 privatization scheme for LRT in Ottawa has had far more serious problems in a short time than LRT lines in other Canadian cities. These include 2 derailments in a 2 month period. This goes beyond the normal problems that one can expect when major projects start operating.
P3 privatization scheme adding to Ottawa LRT problems
A member of the City of Ottawa Transit Commission has pointed out that the type of P3 privatization scheme the City of Ottawa is using for its LRT line is making it harder to get serious problems fixed.
In an article in the Ottawa Citizen, Sarah Wright-Gilbert, a member of the Transit Commission, stated that, “Compounding the frustration is the tangled web that is the public-private-partnership (P3) between the city of Ottawa and RTG. It has created a ‘pass the buck’ environment of secrecy, lacking any semblance of transparency or acting in the public’s interest.”
Secrecy an integral part of privatization schemes
Secrecy is an integral part of privatization schemes. Important documents are kept secret. If they are made public, are redacted.
Unfortunately, as Ottawa’s LRT fiasco shows, the secrecy around privatization schemes affects the quality of service the public receives. When the public has no way of knowing who is supposed to be doing what work, or what standards the corporations controlling privatization schemes are supposed to meet, it is far harder to find the sources of the issue and get the problems fixed.
In the end, the problems with Ottawa’s LRT line will be fixed, but it will take far longer and cost far more than if a P3 privatization scheme hadn’t been used and the project had been publicly procured.