Dear Mayor Gerrestsen,
At the April 11 Kingston City Council meeting you stated, in your comments to Council, that you had read the Ontario’s Auditor General’s reports on the Brampton Civic Hospital and that the Auditor said, indicating a direct quote, “P3s, [like the proposal for the new Providence Care Hospital] were the way to go.”
I cannot find any reference anywhere to any such statement. Only one hospital P3 project in Ontario has ever been audited by Ontario’s Auditor General. This project, the Brampton Civic Hospital P3, was found by the Auditor to be $200 million more expensive on the private financing alone. We have carefully read the two reports on the Brampton P3 in the 2008 and 2010 Annual Reports of the Auditor General. In neither report does the Auditor recommend continuing with privatized P3 schemes. Further, we have done a thorough media search and internet search. Yet I can find no reference to the policy recommendation you allege the Auditor made – neither in the colloquial terms as you put it — nor in any less prosaic language.
Could you please direct me to the evidence that Ontario’s Auditor General stated that privatized P3s “are the way to go.”
Thank you for your help on this matter.
