Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's hard to do five minutes on such a large panel. I'll do my best.
In a number of papers, in particular the C.D. Howe one, which I skimmed and hope to read in greater depth—but thank you all for all the materials—the point was made that left-wing-leaning thinkers are against P3s for ideological reasons. I would ask you whether it is not equally the other way around, that those who are pro-P3 tend to lean towards private as always being better?
We've heard here about a number of examples of successes, including the one in the case study shown here, but we need only look through various articles written about studies to see lots of examples of how in fact P3s cost a lot more and about how in the end a lot of the costs were downsized.
I'll give another example. In British Columbia, for west coast highways, taxpayers had to pay $200 million more out of their pockets than was estimated.
We heard from the agency, the government P3 office that is managing these. They raised the point with us that part of the problem has been the varied expertise, ability, and capacity across federal agencies and departments to actually manage these projects, which in many cases got them into trouble when they were trying to manage or even write these contracts. So in theory the P3 office is now assisting with that.
You all seem to be raising the issue that projects are much better managed when you use P3s, but is it not equally possible that instead of having a P3 office, we could have an office that did the P3 work but also helped departments and agencies better manage these projects and determine how better to proceed with the project and costs? Essentially I'm still not convinced that the P3 is the only way to go. I guess my question is whether there are circumstances in which the government could also manage projects better rather than necessarily going to P3s.