16 LEXPERT
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2017
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WWW.LEXPERT.CA
"CANADA IS RIGHTLY SEEN as a global success in the adoption of
the P3 model," David Caplan, Vice-Chair of Global Public Affairs, a leading
strategic communications and government-relations consultancy, wrote in
September 2015. It's a view supported by Chris Bennett, chair of the financial
services practice at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. "In the past ten years, [On-
tario and British Columbia] together have closed more P3s than any jurisdic-
tion in the world," he says.
How did this come about? e answer, he says, is the adoption, in the
early 2000s, of the private finance initiative (PFI) model developed in Aus-
tralia and the UK to design, build, finance and maintain health-care facilities
through public-private partnerships. "I think in Ontario alone, Infrastructure
Ontario has closed in excess of 40 health-care P3s of one type or another,
although they call them alternative financing and procurement projects."
e reason health-care projects — especially hospitals — were instrumen-
tal in the evolution of P3s in Canada was "the age of our Infrastructure," says
Rick Shaban, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, noting there was a
considerable need in Ontario and other parts of Canada to upgrade or build
PHOTO:
SHUTTERSTOCK
PARTNERSHIPS IN HEALTH CARE
There's a fine
balance when
it comes to public
health care and
private interests.
On the whole, however,
Canada's pioneering
work in health-care P3
serves as a model
for the world
HEALTH-CARE PROJECTS
By Paul McLaughlin
