Concerns about plans to replace Saskatchewan Hospital through a public-private partnership dominated a CUPE meeting at the Dekker Centre Wednesday night.
The town hall meeting, attended by big names such as national CUPE president Paul Moist as well as Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, came in the wake of the decision of the Saskatchewan government to move ahead to the request for proposals stage for the combined new Saskatchewan Hospital and corrections facility, one that is being built through public-private partnerships, or P3s. Three teams had been invited to participate in the RFP stage.
But that good news took a back seat at Wednesday's meeting to concerns at the CUPE meeting about the P3 process.
Presenter Simon Enoch, director of the Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, provided a host of facts and figures, making points that freedom of information requests about P3s were coming up empty.
"Ultimately, what I would like to see is a very robust discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of P3s in Saskatchewan," Enoch told reporters. He said people were under the impression that P3s are "supposed to be more cost-effective and more efficient, and I think if you look at the evidence it's just not true."
He urged people to contact their MLA and the premier, and ask them to put pressure on their elected officials to "open up the books. Show us the exact numbers. Right now we have a provincial Crown corporation called SaskBuilds promoting P3s. If P3s are such a panacea, why can't they stand on their own? Why do they need their own ministry to back them?"
Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians and author of Profit Is Not the Cure: A Citizen's Guide to Saving Medicare, also slammed what she considers a lack of transparency.
"This is our money. This is our public taxpayers' money. These are our services, it's our families, our kids, who are going to be impacted," said Barlow. "That lack of transparency tells you what you need to know, which is that it's not about providing services, it's about making money for private companies."
Her presentation painted a dim view of P3s across the country.
"Across the country, the record shows - and these reports come from left, right and centre - much higher costs at the end, much higher costs, poor quality, damage to local industry, reduced transparency and, as Simon (Enoch) said, bailouts - public bailouts when the project fails."
Moist's presentation included case studies of other P3 hospital projects in Brampton, Ont., Abbotsford, B.C. and Montreal, Que.
He also painted a dismal picture of those projects and particularly pointed to problems with the P3 at McGill University Health Centre. Moist called it a "boondoggle" and noted Arthur Porter, its former Director-General and CEO, was now in a Panamanian prison awaiting extradition on fraud charges.
"In every corner of Canada, Canadians view public health care as a stunning accomplishment," Moist told the audience. "It's something we want to debate out in the open. The citizens of Saskatchewan including this community deserve to debate this out in the open."
Other union leaders at the meeting raised concerns of the implications. In his remarks to the audience at the start of the meeting, CUPE Local 5111 president Brian Manegre said people were going to lose their jobs.
"There's maintenance people still working, still holding their jobs but they've all been told that once the new facility opens they probably won't have their jobs. And where are they going to go?"
He also noted the proposal to include a new corrections facility as part of the project came as something "totally new."
Also represented at the meeting was the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union. Its president, Bob Bymoen, spoke during the question-and-answer session and raised concerns about job losses impacting his union.
He pointed out that the North Battleford Youth Centre would be closing, impacting "almost 150 SGEU members."
Former Battlefords NDP MLA and MP Len Taylor, who took on the role of moderator at the event, noted the proposal to close the youth centre was something he didn't think most people in the Battlefords knew about yet.
Taylor called it "something we should be discussing in this community a great deal more than we have from a number of different perspectives."
