Incorporating the public interest in public-private partnerships in Ontario: a case study of the Eglinton Crosstown

Abstract

Although the Province of Ontario sees Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) as an effective means to procure major transportation infrastructure, the public interest implications of P3s from a planning perspective are little understood. P3s are purported to deliver cost-savings to the public sector through transferring expanded elements of risk to the private sector. However, critics argue that P3s erode the public interest through reduced project transparency, weakened public participation, and higher life-cycle project costs. Through a case study of the Eglinton Crosstown transit line in Toronto, this paper evaluates the extent to which the public sector agency, Infrastructure Ontario (IO), has been able to fulfill a series of evaluative criteria grounded in the public interest. Although IO has been able to maintain the public interest in the case of the Eglinton Crosstown, a lack of consistency in project transparency and weakened ex post reporting standards hampers the ability of the agency to consistently uphold the public interest in present and future projects