Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
One of the things that's interesting from the area I represent is an area that actually had a $1.4 billion P3, the Herb Gray Parkway. We're in the process now of connecting it to a border crossing where we're going to do a P3 for an international border crossing, something that hasn't been done before for a bridge.
With the Herb Gray Parkway, I'd be interested to get your comments on this in terms of risk assessment. It was a P3 where basically we had what was called “girder-gate”. Five hundred girders had to be destroyed with 200 pulled from the ground and replaced because a private contractor in the P3 decided to make shortcuts and didn't do the proper welding. Interestingly enough, the reason this all became public was because of one of the workers I met at the gym I go to. That led to the entire issue.
There were also other issues with non-compliance of payment. The P3 main contractor would not pay local businesses and had to be issued into court to do so. Local businesses that were supposedly guaranteed contracts, or at least some partial competitive work around the project, weren't paid for some work. Lastly, there are some ongoing court costs that are still being litigated. With that, I'm describing a P3 process that does not seem to be unusual.
I'll ask Mr. Sanger, and I'll go across, about what he thinks with regard to this P3 element. The concern that I have is that we also add into it inefficiencies and extra costs that can take away from the fact that a design, build, and payback over a bonding system might actually provide an advantage versus that of the profit margin that's added in for a P3.