1. STABILIZING DISPOSSESSION
HOW P3 ENABLING FIELDS HELP CUSHION THE IMPACT
OF AN ECONOMIC CRISIS ON PRIVATIZATION POLICY
HEATHER WHITESIDE

2. P3 ENABLING FIELDS
BC Ontario
Enabling legislation Capital Asset Management Infrastructure Planning,
Framework (CAMF) (2002) Financing and Procurement
& Framework (IPFP) (2004)
capital planning
frameworks The Health Sector Alternative Financing and
Partnerships Agreement Act Procurement (AFP) (2004)
(Bill 94) (2003)
Supportive
Regional Health Authority Local Health Integration
secondary reforms (RHA) restructuring (2001) Network (LHIN) creation
(2006)
Institutional support Partnerships BC (2002) Infrastructure Ontario (2005)

3. RID
Provincial P3 enabling fields routinize, institutionalize,
and depoliticize P3 policy:
 Routinization: development of supportive routines and
protocols & normalized processes and procedures
 Institutionalization: new actors empowered, institutions
created, sense of permanency generated
 Depoliticization: commodification by technocracy

4. P3S AND THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS:
LONGSTANDING PROBLEMS COMPOUNDED
 Financial crisis
 2008 and 2009: delays, renegotiations, collapsed
deals & the volume of new deals dropped off
significantly (Canada and worldwide)
 E.g., See Hugh Mackenzie’s 2009 report Bad Before,
Worse Now
 Led to a questioning of the P3 model itself
 E.g.,: Scotland's Finance Minister (2009) called
PFI “one of the worst excesses of the age of
financial irresponsibility”

5. CUSHIONING PRIVATIZATION POLICY
 Soft lock-in
 External problems: automatic stabilizer (?)
 Internal problems: flanking mechanism (?)