[mobglob-discuss] Tieleman on P3s

[Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA]

The speakers that Bill Tieleman references in his column this week can be
seen and heard at: http://www.globaljustice.ca  in quicktime video for the
web.   Regards,  -tc
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  ---- Forwarded message: ----From: "West Star" <weststar at telus.net>
Subject: Tieleman on P3s
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 14:53:19 -0700


Greetings all!

Here's this week's column on the Campbell Liberal government's reckless
pursuit of P3s - Public-Private-Partnerships.

ADDED BONUS:  Last week's column on the problems with the Green Party'x
proportional representation initiative generated major email to me and
letters to the Straight. Those letters follow below my column.  Some are
rather nasty, others supportive.  Feel free to join the debate by
emailing letters to editor at straight.com

If you emailed me personally and haven't had a reply -- my apologies and
please be patient -- I will answer all emails but I have a few dozen at
least.

LASTLY, Thursday's CBC TV political panel here in BC was pre-empted by =
hockey and will be broadcast TONIGHT, Friday June 7 at about 6:40 p.m. =
-- talking federal politics -- Martin & McDonough.

Regards,

Bill Tieleman
West Star Communications

Website: www.weststarcommunications.com

Read the Georgia Straight & watch CBC TV
Canada Now Thursdays for political commentary
by Bill Tieleman

Bill Tieleman's Political Connections column in the Georgia Straight

for June 6-13, 2002


Public-Private Deals May Be Bad for Health


"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
			- George Santayana

Will British Columbia repeat the mistakes of the United Kingdom and
elsewhere in its reckless embrace of public-private partnerships? 
There's every indication the Gordon Campbell government intends to do
just that, disregarding strong evidence that many "P3s" are a public
service disaster.

"We are going to look aggressively at public-private partnerships: We
are going to tap into the imagination, the expertise, the innovation of
the private sector to meet our public-sector needs," Campbell told chief
executive officers at the B.C. Construction Show on April 2. And in the
spring throne speech, the government said it would "actively pursue" P3s
in "transportation and highways, information technology, housing, land
and resource-development, health support services and facilities, and
education infrastructure."

So it's no surprise that last week two very different events looked at
the rapid growth of P3s.  One conference, sponsored by the Canadian
Council for Public-Private Partnerships, was sold out by May 8, despite
rates of up to $900 per person, as eager P3 promoters gathered to hear
about the feast to be served up in B.C.  B.C. Finance Minister Gary
Collins delivered a speech May 30 and other government representatives
and Liberal party insiders were featured speakers.

But anyone wanting to hear about the darker side of P3s should have
attended a free public meeting May 29 held by the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives and featuring an international panel of P3 critics.
And those concerned about getting good value for taxpayer dollars should
take a hard look at the disturbing evidence that while P3s are highly
profitable for business, those profits often come at the expense of
public services.

Retired Scottish doctor Matthew Dunnigan, a fellow of the Royal College
of Physicians of Glasgow and Edinburgh, has studied P3s in Britain
extensively and amused the audience with his blunt assessment.

"I was astonished when I heard the B.C. government is adopting P3s.  I
apologize on behalf of my people; this is, regretfully, a British
hybrid," Dunnigan said.  "My conclusion, based on direct experience, is
as follows: P3s in health care provide poor value for money and should
be rejected."

Interestingly, Dunnigan is not absolutely opposed to public-private
partnerships, saying: "Some privatization is good, some is bad."  But
when it comes to health care, he said, the facts are clear.

"The vision is a chimera, a mirage," he said of P3s.  In his study of P3
hospitals in the Edinburgh area from 1986-91, Dunnigan documented "a
massive decline in treatment of patients because of a loss of capacity."

Dunnigan's experience is echoed by a recent study comparing death rates
in U.S. for-profit versus not-for profit hospitals.  It found that if
Canada switched to for-profit hospitals, at least 2,200 more patients
would die needlessly each year.

P.J. Devereaux, a McMaster University doctor and lead researcher for the
study, told the Globe and Mail he concluded from the exhaustive study of
38 million patients in 26,000 U.S. hospitals from 1982 to 1995 that
private hospitals slash costs to make a profit.  "The reality is that
they need a return of 10-15 percent, and the easiest way to do that is
to cut corners on higher-skilled personnel, which is the biggest expense
in a hospital," Devereaux said.

The death rate in for-profit hospitals is about two percent higher than
in public hospitals, even though public facilities tend to have sicker
patients, Devereaux found in his study, reported in the Canadian Medical
Association Journal,

Dunnigan cited the study and warned that selling health-care P3s will
require a government public relations blitz.  "It will rely heavily on
spin, propaganda, distortion of facts and, quite disturbingly, the
discrediting of opposing view," he said.

Closer to home, a report last month by noted forensic auditor Ron Parks
also warns of the risks of P3 hospital construction.  In a study for the
Hospital Employees' Union, Parks examined a PricewaterhouseCoopers
review that recommends building a private hospital in Abbotsford.

Parks found that although there might be small costs savings of about
$2.6 million dollars on a $300 million plus project - less than one per
cent over 30 years - that may be the very best possible outcome.  He
said an array of other costs haven't been factored into pricing the
private option, and that even minor changes could lead to a project that
would be more expensive than a traditional public one.

"If Victoria wants to pursue a private-public partnership policy for
health care or public infrastructure projects, it definitely has a lot
more homework to do," Parks said May 8 in a HEU press release.

Of course, health care is not the only sector the B.C. Liberals are
preparing for P3s.  Author Heather-jane Robertson, of the Ontario =
Institute for Studies in Education, told the CCPA event that using P3s
to construct schools in Nova Scotia was so costly that the government
program was cancelled after 30 schools were built, leaving 100 more on
the drawing boards.

"Your government does intend to P3 on your education system," Robertson
told the laughing crowd.  And John Loxley, an economics professor at the
University of Manitoba, detailed a series of Canadian construction P3
projects he has studied where the cost to taxpayers has been much higher
than had they been built publicly.

Premier Campbell's "aggressive" pursuit of P3s without considering
others' experience may lead to some very costly and avoidable mistakes.

* * * *
West Star Communications' President Bill Tieleman has clients in labour, =
business and non-profits. He is a political commentator Thursdays on CBC =
TV's Canada Now and regularly on CBC Radio's Early Edition. Email at =
weststar at telus.net



Georgia Straight June 6-13, 2002

Letters to the Editor

READERS HEED CALL TO DEBATE PRO-REP

Bill Tieleman's article was an inexcusably poor piece of journalism,
containing nothing but unsubstantiated arguments with hardly a shred of
real evidence to support them ["Proportional Representation Has Clear
Downside", May 30-June 6]. Had he done some research, he might have
noted that New Zealand adopted the proposed mixed-member proportional
voting system in 1996.

The two elections held since led to a centre-right government followed
by a centre-left government. Minority parties from the further left,
further right, middle of the centre, and greenie left have all been
represented in parliament. Both governments have lived to call another
election. Prime ministers and opposition leaders have been dispatched by
coups from within. Progressive change is indeed more difficult, which
can be a relief to a population victimized by rampant governments bent
on radical change (see New Zealand, 1984; B.C., 2001-2002).

The last time I heard many of Tieleman's arguments, they were coming
from a well-funded advertising campaign against MMP sponsored by
right-wing big business in New Zealand. Maybe B.C. should adopt another
of New Zealand's electoral innovations, the three-year election cycle,
which ensures that governments are frequently held accountable for their
actions.

Chris Owen
Vancouver



I was pleased to read Bill Tieleman's warnings about the pitfalls of
proportional representation. Although I traditionally support leftist
underdog parties, I believe what the Green Party is proposing is
inherently undemocratic and ignores better alternatives.

What advocates of proportional representation fail to recognize is that
our system is already proportionally represented, giving equal weight to
rural and urban votes. Part of what Tieleman touched on was that the
B.C. Liberals lost the 1996 election with a slight majority of votes
because their platform both ignored and angered residents of northern
B.C. (suggesting dismantling BC Rail, et cetera). Under proportional
representation, the Lower Mainland would always decide the province's
government because that's where the majority of votes are.

There are alternatives Tieleman didn't explore. For instance, a ballot
where you can place an X beside more than one candidate. Whoever gets
the most votes still wins, but we would be free to vote for our
preferred party or parties without fear of vote-splitting. Or we could
have the "preferential" ballot, where you vote for a candidate by
placing 1, 2, 3, et cetera, by your preferred candidates, and the winner
is elected through attrition until one candidate has over 50 percent
support, rendering strategic voting unnecessary.

While "pro-rep" might be appealing to disgruntled left-wing parties, you
can bet that an extremist far-right party will spring up to take
advantage of the minuscule number of votes they'll need to win a seat.
Let's examine all the options for electoral reform before embracing one.

Michael Riches
Vancouver

--
The downsides to proportional representation only look clear when you
ignore any facts that may work against your argument. Of the first five
points Bill Tieleman raised, two broad themes emerge.

First is his stated concern about control resting in the leadership of
political parties and not in the communities, geographic and
demographic, that make up B.C.

B.C.'s established political parties carefully control the nomination of
the single individual that the public will eventually see on the ballot.
That person is most often a white male living in an urban area. All
evidence indicates that under proportional representation this would
change.

The second theme is a concern that "bold vision would be stifled". Quite
a lot of "bold vision" in the provincial governments over the past few
years would have been better off tempered by debate and considered input
from a broader representation of the public (fast ferries and treaty
referendumbs, to name just a couple).

Finally, the most compelling reason for supporting the initiative is
found in Tieleman's final argument against it. It's true that with
proportional representation there would likely not have been a majority
NDP government in B.C. But why should 100 percent of British Columbians
be subjected to rule by a political party that consistently represents
less than 40 percent of the public?

Strong progressive policies get implemented by governments that show
leadership through an ability to collaborate with all sectors of the
public. They do not develop through silencing critics with a grossly
unfair electoral system.

The Green Party of B.C. is proud to support the Free Your Vote campaign
precisely because the public would have substantially more
enfranchisement in the political process.

Andrea Reimer, communications chair, Green Party of B.C
--
It is clear that vote-splitting in a first-past-the-pole system can
frustrate the will of the people. Proportional representation, which at
first blush sounds more democratic, is sometimes proposed by people who
have been burned by vote-splitting. However, Bill Tieleman clearly
articulates PR's serious shortcomings. In practice, it can be as
undemocratic as FPTP. Adriane Carr actually advocates a mix of the two
systems rather than straight PR. This is a tacit acknowledgement of PR's
shortcomings and is analogous to asking the electorate to swallow two
poisons in the hopes that one will cancel the other.

There is a third alternative. It is preferential balloting, in which a
person votes not just for their first choice but also their second
choice, third choice, and so on. First-choice votes are counted first,
and if there is no majority winner then the candidate with the fewest
votes is eliminated, and his or her ballots are distributed by their
second-choice votes among the remaining candidates. This continues until
a candidate emerges with a clear majority. Therefore, the winner is the
candidate most preferred by the majority of voters. In this way PB is
somewhat like runoff elections, but faster and less expensive.

Under FPTP, people might vote for their second choice to avoid
vote-splitting, but PB frees them to mark their true preferences. This
gives parties a clearer picture of their actual level of support. PB
also encourages consensus- building among parties, as each seeks to
become the second choice to voters for the other parties.

PB is widely used in Australia, where it was introduced in 1919. For
more information, do a Web search on "Australian preferential ballot".

Darrel Braun
Vancouver
--
Many of the problems described in Bill Tieleman's column are due to
Adriane Carr's form of PR (closed-list MMP). Other forms, such as
open-list PR and single transferable vote, give less power to the party
and offer better community representation. It is misleading to suggest
that all PR systems share the same problems.

Israel and Italy may be politically unstable, but not because of PR.
They would be worse off if they had a non-PR system. Israel is probably
avoiding a civil war by having a system in which Israeli Arabs have
political representation.

Coalition governments are a good thing. They force governments to work
together, rather than just slagging each other for the press.

The NDP would be less likely to get a majority of seats because election
results would become more stable (not less) from one election to
another; however, they might gain power in a coalition government, and
they wouldn't need to fear being reduced to two seats when they receive
21.56 percent of the popular vote.

David Schaub
Vancouver



Bill Tieleman displays ignorance and bias in his discussion of
proportional representation. In a province concerned with minority
rights, ignoring 42 percent of the electorate seems obscene. Is it
democratic to neglect those voters who happen to live in a riding
dominated, perhaps marginally, by one particular party? Does it
encourage participation in the political process?

Contrary to his statements, party lists will be more democratic because
(in, for example, the Dutch system) the people can vote for a party as
well as the candidate-those candidates receiving most votes obtain the
seats, not those appointed by party leaders.

PR would leave the left out of government? The Netherlands just ended
eight years of labour government. The Green party is the coalition
partner in Germany. The NDP's previous 40-percent election results (with
the remainder split) would have certainly resulted in an NDP-led
coalition government here, in any conceivable PR system.

So Italy and Israel show that PR fails? Israel, perpetually at war, is
exceptional because its government intertwines religion and politics. It
does not have the five-percent barrier (such as in the German system)
proposed by Adriane Carr. As for Italy, Tieleman seems ignorant of their
constitutional changes that actually resemble Carr's suggestions of a
mixed elected chamber. Perhaps a little reading on the subject might
have helped.

Gertjan Hofman
Vancouver
--
So I see that your resident NDP bum-boy, apologist, and hack, Bill
Tieleman, cautions your readers about a proportional- representation
system for B.C., claiming that under such a system, "the New Democratic
Party would likely never have formed a single B.C. government, nor would
any other left or environmental party."

Sounds good to me. Where do I sign the pro-PR petition?


Brad Philley
Vancouver