Green Party leader Elizabeth May

The week - November 20

Smiling through the tears

World financial markets may be crumbling, but Partnerships BC CEO Larry Blain says projects underway in the province using the public-private partnership model are in no peril—this despite large European government bailouts to the two financial firms carrying the debt for construction of the new Royal Jubilee Hospital patient tower.

The consortium of North American and European multinational firms who won the contract to design, build and operate the 500-bed project secured loans worth $206 million for the patient tower through Belgian bank Dexia and Irish-German banking conglomerate Depfa, both of which have seen their capital reserves and share prices tank on investments in bad mortgages to people with poor credit.

In late September, Dexia received a $11.3-billion loan from the Belgian, French and Dutch governments. Around the same time, Depfa required a $54-billion cash injection from its supporting governments after it “ran into short term funding problems,” according to the Irish Times newspaper.

Monday wanted to know what this meant for the Royal Jubilee project, currently in mid-construction.

“Our style here is that when the bidders respond to our request for proposals, they have to show that their financing is committed—both their own equity, and the debt from whatever source they’re going to get the debt from—and they have to show that it’s committed, available, and that its price or interest rate is committed as well, and they have to hold that commitment,” Blain told Monday.

Blain maintains that if, for some reason, Depfa or Dexia were unable to meet their funding commitments to the participating firms, the onus falls on those firms to find alternate sources of funding to complete the project.

“In any case, we don’t pay for the project until the project is completed and works according to the standards that are set according to the contract,” says Blain. “And the owner, VIHA, won’t pay anything until the project is entirely finished.”

This, in Blain’s opinion, is the beauty of the P3 project: risk is transferred from the taxpayer to the private partners. A flipside to this risk transfer, of course, is that changes to market conditions could result in windfall profits for the participating firms far above those anticipated when the contract was signed. Take, for instance, the fact that steel and concrete prices are in a nosedive as demand for building materials skids around the globe. Cheaper materials mean cheaper building costs, but the terms of the contract with the provincial government are locked in. So any savings in the cost of building goes to the private firms, while the government pays the amount promised at the outset.

“Once we reach financial close, we have transferred the price of the contract to the concessionaire, to the construction company, and to us it’s a fixed price,” says Blain. “If they are lucky and the world unfolds in a way that they did not anticipate, then they would realize the advantage of that. Of course, if the reverse took place, and they made an assumption that prices were going to decline, and they didn’t decline as much as they had assumed, then it would show up on the other side of their ledger.”

Meanwhile, the public will never know exactly how much the private firms profit from their participation, because the Campbell Liberals guard the details of their P3 contracts more closely than BC Ferries guards its books.

Green leader makes Victoria visit

In the days before the October general election, federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May skipped out on a date with her Victoria supporters after politics called her back to Ottawa. However, the Green Party head will be back in Victoria this weekend to promote her new book, Global Warming for Dummies, and to drum up some fund-raising after the party’s coffers were emptied fighting the October federal election.

Monday caught up with May prior to her visit to discuss what the coming years have in store for the federal Green Party, which, yet again, failed to capture a seat in the House of Commons.

“Post-election, we need to make sure that a lot of Canadians recognize that even though we did not win a seat, we made remarkable progress,” says May. “And amid the circumstances which were adverse to our success—low voter turnout, a short election campaign, and one dominated by a financial meltdown—the fact that we were the only party that actually increased our support in that kind of climate is something to be proud of. That we had 270,000 more people that voted Green than in 2006 when every other party saw their actual vote-count drop is important to recognize.”

May expressed serious reservations about new voter ID requirements that came into effect for the October election, which serve to disenfranchise certain segments of society.

“It’s almost getting back to the early days where you could vote if you’re landed gentry,” she says. “Who has photo IDs in our society? People who drive cars and people who have passports. So low-income Canadians often don’t have either and that’s a significant demographic that’s going to show up at the polls and be told, ‘Where’s your photo ID?’ They leave and they don’t come back.”

May says that while the federal Liberal party is tearing itself asunder searching for a new leader, she intends to stay at the helm of the Greens until at least 2010, when her term expires.

“If I’m right, and the heart of the climate crisis is a democracy crisis, I shouldn’t quit politics, because I think that would send a bad message to people.”

May will be speaking at Oak bay High School on November 22 at 3 p.m. Admission ranges from $10 to $20.

Tackling Transphobia

While much progress has been made in Canada towards inclusivity and tolerance, transgendered people remain the subject of curious stares, not to mention insults and, often, physical violence.

Local activist group TransAction is trying to stamp out the stigma that continues to plague the trans community, both here and around the world.

“Considering how high the levels of assault are against trans people, chances are, and it’s a sad fact, that if we haven’t been assaulted already, that we will be in our lifetimes,” says TransAction spokesperson Anna Turje. “That’s just part of being trans in this world. We’re glad we have our lovely community, but it is a fact of life for us.”

On Thursday, November 20, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., members of the local trans community and their allies will gather in Centennial Square for a Trans Day of Remembrance Rally, not only to remember trans people who have fallen victim to gender-based violence, but to celebrate the eventual end of gender being based in binary opposition.