12-12-2014, 12:15 AM
If governments were able to look beyond the next election cycle, and maintain a public trust in its bureaucrats, then public ministries could become experts in their respective fields. Some Canadian ministries, federal or provincial, do have globally recognized expertise in their fields and are often called upon to travel elsewhere to share their knowledge. Unfortunately, recent governments have focused on getting out of the business of being good at anything (or for that matter, allowing their bureaucrats to tell anyone about what they are doing). This leads to the public perception that our public servants are not good at doing their jobs and therefore the private sector would be better off carrying out the tasks. Ironically, some of these PPPs are backed by public pension funds.
Public-private partnerships have been around for a very, very long time. Think of where Canada would be without the Canadian Pacific Railway, or even further back, the Hudson's Bay Company, both of which were private enterprises backed by the public purse or, in the case of the HBC, granted a Royal charter to assume the risk in developing Canada.
Public-private partnerships have been around for a very, very long time. Think of where Canada would be without the Canadian Pacific Railway, or even further back, the Hudson's Bay Company, both of which were private enterprises backed by the public purse or, in the case of the HBC, granted a Royal charter to assume the risk in developing Canada.