By John Bell In October 2014 the business press reported: “Carillion Canada fined $900,000 for not properly clearing QEW during two storms.” What then seemed an isolated bit of corporate irresponsibility takes on a different character with today’s news that Carillion’s British parent company, a world leader in Public-Private Partnership (P3) deals, has gone bankrupt. Continue readingCarillion crash
infrastructure
By Toby Sanger In their election platform and in ministerial mandate letters, the federal Liberals promised they would “establish the Canada Infrastructure Bank to provide low-cost financing (including loan guarantees) for new municipal infrastructure projects.” This had the potential to be a positive initiative. The federal government can borrow at very low rates — significantly Continue readingCanada Infrastructure Bank paving the road for privatization
By Michal Rozworski The fall fiscal update gave us a good idea of the economic model that Trudeau’s Liberals are gradually putting forward and it is business-friendly to the core. The infrastructure bank was the big news item in the fall fiscal update but there are far more goodies to make business happy tucked away Continue readingTrudeau’s pro-business economic agenda
By Michal Rozworski Recycling is supposed to be a good thing, so when the federal Liberals quietly announced that “asset recycling” would be part of their strategy for meeting their much-ballyhooed infrastructure promises, not many eyebrows were raised. They should have been. Asset recycling is an obscure code word for selling our public goods for Continue readingHow not to fund infrastructure