Whitehorse residents heard arguments against the use of public-private partnership projects (P3s) in the Yukon at Wednesday night's 'A Bridge Too Far' meeting at the CYO Hall.

P3s enable the government to partner with corporations to often take on large-scale infrastructure projects.

The Yukon government is currently exploring the possibility of using a P3 project for the construction of the bridge in Dawson City.

The meeting was sponsored by the Yukon Federation of Labour, the Yukon Building Trades Council, the Social Justice Committee and the Yukon Employee' Union.

Vancouver resident and journalist Murray Dobbin and public interest and international trade lawyer Steven Shrybman of Ottawa argued P3s are costly and present the danger of large corporations taking over public space.

'There is nothing good about P3s,' said Dobbin. 'They are essentially corporations trying to take over public services.

'They are sold as a way of transferring risk from the public sector to the private sector. That's just completely false,' he added.

A Department of Economic Development document discussing P3s indicates the partnerships are meant to be a way for the public and private sector to share risk, rewards and resources when completing a project.

Dobbin said P3 projects may actually be worse than full-fledge privatization because the contracted corporation is not responsible to the public and has no transparency.

He pointed to the 'extreme secrecy' of the corporations. The corporations bidding on the contract demand their proposals be kept confidential because they don't want other bidders to know how they do business, he said.

This is bad for the larger public, he added, because 'the essence of meeting the public interest is transparency.'

However, Manager of Economic Research for the Department of Economic Development, Scott Milton, said in a briefing Wednesday that the confidentiality companies demand is a way to help ensure the government gets a good deal.

After the government receives the proposals from the two companies bidding on the Dawson bridge project on May 12, they will be examined against the confidential 'public sector comparator' which will be used to determine if the proposals provide 'value for money' to taxpayers, he said.

'We have a public sector comparator at this point,' Milton said, 'but we have to keep it entirely confidential to keep a competitive tension. Obviously, having proponents finding out what that figure is could jeopardize the procurement process.'

He added: 'A key feature of P3s is that you really want what is called competitive tension to build up in your project so the companies are in fact giving the government the best value for money they can.'

In an interview following last night's meeting, Dobbin said from a taxpayer's point of view, value for money means it's going to cost less.

Both Dobbin and Shrybman said during the meeting P3s don't mean a lower cost.

'The irony is that you actually end up paying more and getting less, which is why I think the government here is having so much trouble defending why they would do that with a bridge,' said Dobbin.

Dobbin indicated legal costs, consulting costs such as those the government has with Partnerships BC for the building of the bridge, the need to monitor the contract after it has been signed and the reality that corporations exist to make profit can all increase the overall cost of P3 projects.

Milton said yesterday, though, that the P3s procurement process allows the government to consider life-cylce costs that look at maintenance, upgrades and ongoing operations.

He said this allows the government to have a good understanding of costs up-front so there are no surprises down the road. He added traditional forms of procurement for major projects don't usually consider such long-term costs.

Another feature of P3s, Milton said, is that like a mortgage, it allows the government to spread the costs of the project over time. This fact is what is making the partnership for the bridge 'politically sexy' to the Yukon Party, NDP spokesperson Ken Bolton said at the meeting last night.

The Taxpayer Protection Act doesn't allow the Yukon government to go into debt. If the government were to take on a failed project, it could put them into an accumulated deficit position that could trigger an election, Bolton said.

'This is a way of building vote buying infrastructure over a long period of time so it doesn't put them at that kind of risk,' he said.

At Wednesday's P3 briefing, it was stated the concession agreement for the bridge will have a 30-year life.

Dobbin said, 'People don't like long contracts. Talk to any contractor and ask if they would sign a 30-year business deal with a supplier. They'd say you are crazy.'

Premier Dennis Fentie and his ministers have said repeatedly in the house that no decisions have been made whether the Dawson bridge will be a P3.

Milton confirmed there will be no decisions until the proposals are received in May.

'It will become incumbent on us to show clearly that this project will deliver value for money to the taxpayers,' he said.

'If at the end of the day, we get proposals that don't show value for money, I would suspect that is the point we abandon the P3 and continue with the more traditional type of procurement for projects,' Milton added.

At last night's meeting the speakers pointed to examples in Ontario and British Columbia to show some P3s do not deliver value for money.

Abbotsford Regional Hospital in B.C. shows cost overruns pushing fees from the initial $210 million to $355 million on a 30-year P3 contract.

In Ontario, the express toll 407 highway is a 99-year P3 contract that has allowed the contractor to increase off-peak hour tolls 350 per cent since 1997.

A frequent example at the meeting was the Confederation Bridge in Prince Edward Island where the Auditor General of Canada has found the P3 project cost $45 million more than it would have cost if built publicly.

Last night's speakers deemed these P3s as failures, but in an interview this morning, Milton said not all partnership projects go wrong.

Milton said the Sierra-Yoyo-Desan road in Fort Nelson, B.C., is an example of a successful P3 that has won awards in Canada.

The SYD Road is a provincial government partnership with Ledcor Projects Inc. The project has provided a 173-km multi-user, resource road which allows year-round access to Fort Nelson. The contractor has also signed a 14-year maintenance contract.

Partnerships BC facilitated this project and Milton said it is of a more similar scope to the Dawson bridge and other possible P3 projects in the Yukon's future than other examples.

Beyond the concerns about cost of the bridge and what the opposition has labelled repeatedly in the legislature as the 'secrecy' of the process, NDP Leader Todd Hardy has also asked to know what the Yukon Party's policy is in regards to P3s.

'Once we conclude with the bridge process and make a decision about how to go forward and then at some point after that we will make some sort of decision about the procedures we went through with the bridge as a potential P3 and incorporate that into some policy around how the government might proceed in the future, if at all, on P3 projects,' said Milton.

Opposition parties said in the legislature on Tuesday that there may be other P3 projects on the horizon. Liberal Leader Pat Duncan said the mobile communications solutions project may be a P3, while NDP MLA Steve Cardiff expressed concerns about the Whitehorse Correctional Centre's future.

'If the bridge gets through, it opens the doors to other projects on other services and facilities that are more important than a bridge,' said Shrybman.

'If you don't defend public space, you'll lose it,' added Dobbin.

Fentie has said repeatedly the government will not use public-private partnerships for hospitals, schools or jails.