This may be in a sense an age-old debateāin academia, anyway.
To some extent it depends on how you define privatization, and I'm sorry to give that kind of answer. Which parts of the P3 are private? The land remains public, most often, in Canada. I think in every case I've ever looked at, the land remains a public asset.
No, the infrastructure that's built isn't outright sold; it's always structured as a lease, as far as I'm aware. The lease terms, however, vary from 25 years to 30 years or more; it's at least a generation.
In terms of the financing, one thing I'd like to respond to, from a point that was raised earlier, is the question of whether the public can take on debt or whether we should be using P3 financing.
The P3 is a long-run obligation of the government precisely because it is owned by the government and structured as a lease. Within the P3 financing itself, typically 70% is debt-financed and 30% is equity-financed.
If all those things are equal, essentially what becomes different or privatized about a P3 is the equity portion. It's that the private partner has ownership stakes, rights, decision-making and control over the aspects that the project agreement divvies out to them. In the case of a hospital in Canada, while practice varies, these can be anything other than clinical care. That leaves a wide range of services and maintenance and other forms of decision-making.
Is it privatization or isn't it? It really involves the privatization of decision-making, depending on the particular project, and the equity portion is central to this.