Great announcement today: the Quebec agency which is supposed to oversee the province's Private Public Partnerships--those famous PPPs that were supposed to save us a lot of money--has been given a new name. It will now be called Infrastructure Quebec, and it will also be responsible for projects constructed in the traditional way--that is by the government as lead player.
PPPs, as many people have been pointing out for a long time, are not very efficient, and they put profit, not the public good, at the list of their aims. The current Quebec government began to back away from them about a year ago, but this is a sign that perhaps someone has seen the light. Given the current avalanche of questions about payoffs and kickbacks in municipal construction projects, it's about time that the screws on public spending were tightened. We don't need less money or fewer projects, particularly as we try to relaunch the economy, but we do need to have the money spent well.
Which prompted one commentator on Radio Can to say this morning that the name change was made to get away from that other PPP: politics, power and pilfering. Too bad, but probably too true.
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