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Privatization, whether talking about Saint John's water or the future of medical services province-wide, has been all the rage for the past year. In Fredericton it's the "flavour of the month," with the Liberal government announcing a never-ending litany of projects they plan on funding through "public-private partnerships," otherwise known as P3s.

In Saint John we are having another outbreak of the never-ending "contracting out" debate. Is the city better off trying to upgrade its water system "in-house," or should it contract a private company to deliver clean, highly treated water on a long-term basis? CUPE's position is clear. It wants city water to remain in public hands, provided by its dues-paying membership. That's not an unreasonable position for a union to hold, although I don't recall that CUPE was particularly vocal when much of Saint John suffered through three boil-water orders over the past few months.

When things go well, it's a sign of good union labour. When things go wrong, well, that's management's fault. So consider me an agnostic in the great "water contracting" debate. I can see an upside to putting Saint John's water out to competitive tender (perhaps CUPE might submit a bid), but I'm not altogether certain that the city would be better off with a private contractor, at least not financially. Because, in the world of private water, as in most P3s, something tends to get lost in the mix; something called value-for-money.

Public-private partnerships are not new to Canada, or even New Brunswick. Terminal Three at Pearson Airport in Toronto was one of the first, in the early 1990s. Several hospitals have been built in Ontario under the P3 model, although none arrived in line with the original budget. The McKenna government undertook several, including a private jail, a toll highway and, not to be forgotten, the "white elephant" computer system that Anderson Consulting (of Enron fame) was contracted to create for the Department of Justice. In the end, the computer system was scrapped, after considerable public expense, and the other projects were eventually assumed by the provincial government, leaving the whole issue of whether P3s are a good idea very much up-in-the-air. But, as it currently sits with the provincial Liberals, a poor track record for P3s is no reason not to try again. So, how has it gone so far?

New Brunswick currently has two good examples of how the future might look in a P3 world. On the one hand, the "new and improved" ambulance service; on the other hand, the untendered and unsolicited contract for three nursing homes given ("awarded" would be the wrong word, since it implies competition) to Shannex Inc., a Nova Scotia nursing home operator.

Despite the summertime lull, ambulance issues continue to generate column inches in the province's newspapers. Most recently it was the news that Saint John mayor Ivan Court recently joined the "30 minute club," having to wait a half-hour for an ambulance to arrive at an accident scene at a high profile Saint John intersection. The reasons for the delay remain a mystery, but so, it seems, is the source behind assurances from Ambulance New Brunswick and the minister of health that response times (since December) are no worse than they were before the system was amalgamated under a private operator.

The data from before amalgamation, it turns out, was incomplete and the department is now at a loss to justify the minister's statements from back in May. Further, a large question continues to loom over Ambulance New Brunswick. What, exactly, was the point of amalgamating 54 private operators who were satisfying local needs, into an integrated entity which has difficulty finding addresses outside the Greater Moncton area? Was it simply that a large, well-connected, private company put forward a business proposal (as a P3), or can real benefits be shown? To date, there is no concrete evidence to support the later.

The other P3 bookend is Shannex Inc., the winner of the untendered, unannounced and, apparently, conveniently avoidable competition to construct three nursing homes in New Brunswick. At the project announcement, New Brunswickers learned that a competitive process was unnecessary because the nursing homes were needed on an "emergency basis." However, it turned out that the company and department had been in discussions for more than a year prior to the deal being reached. This might not equate to an emergency deal in most people's opinion, unless they are the same folks who track response times for Ambulance New Brunswick.

In ordinary circumstances, the purpose of a P3 is to insulate the taxpayer from unnecessary risk, either through development and construction costs, or to offset the costs of borrowing. There is, of course, another route to achieve the same result - competitive bidding under the Public Purchasing Act. The current government seems determined to avoid the latter route.

Value-for-money, it seems, is the biggest casualty of this approach.

Lisa Keenan of Saint John is a lawyer and the former president of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party. Her column appears on Friday.