Mr. Speaker, there is no question that governments are trying to promote the whole P3, the public-private partnership, approach as an answer. There is also no question, in my mind, that the reason they are doing this is so those dollars will not show on the books. The reality is that the Canadian taxpayers will ultimately pay more out of their pockets. That is the one thing they fail to mention when they talk about this. Over the long term, it will cost the taxpayer more and, quite frankly, it will be a lot more.
The same scenario will show in toll roads. It will show in the partnerships. In the building of hospitals, schools, any of those things, it becomes a much greater cost. The government can get away with saying it does not owe this much money because it is not on the books.
I just want to mention a couple of things that happen with the private for profit providers. Investors expect 15% profits annually. This is a U.S. survey. We do not have all the comparisons within Canada because no one has bothered to go ahead and do that. I mentioned already the significant time and money that has to be put into strategies for defence, marketing, insurance administration and bill collection, which drive up the costs.
There is also a necessity to compete. Imagine one hospital or one clinic competing with another so it gets all the business and, as a result, it increases the cost because there is a duplication of services.
Here is the clincher, and I do not think many people out there will doubt this any more, the prevalence of fraud among for profit providers in the U.S. has become a major cost factor. The cost of monitoring, suppressing and prosecuting such behaviour has become part of the administrative overhead associated with for profit providers.