Manitoba turning to public-private model to build 9 new schools

Manitoba plans to build nine new schools over the next four years using a funding model the Progressive Conservative government once rejected.

The province will seek a single contractor to build all nine schools through a public-private partnership, sometimes called a P3.

"The purpose of bundling the schools together is to really accelerate the time frame and to ensure that we get more schools built more quickly," Government Services Minister James Teitsma said at a Friday news conference.

His government rejected using public-private partnerships to build schools in 2018, but Teitsma said Friday the partnership this time will allow the schools to be built quickly and at optimal value.

Details of the partnership will be worked out, but one of the provisions will see the private sector bid on both the building and maintenance of the schools, Teitsma said.

That could mean, for example, a contractor might opt to spend more money at the construction stage to avoid needing to do a roof replacement on a school during its life cycle, he said.

"That will result in a lower overall cost for the life cycle of the school, even though there may be a higher upfront cost. Those kinds of things are what the advantages that this type of approach will bring," he said.

Bundling the schools together will also allow trade workers to move from site to site, potentially saving money, he said.

The Progressive Conservative government had studied private partnerships in 2018, but opted to build five schools the traditional way, saying at that point it would save money.

In 2019, the government promised to build 13 schools over 10 years, on top of seven schools that were already underway at that point.

Accelerated plan

The province said Friday it will reach that goal two years sooner than planned, and will add three more schools to the original plan.

Teitsma made Friday's announcement at the newly opened Bison Run School in south Winnipeg, one of the schools the province promised to build in 2019. 

The nine schools being built through public-private partnership will be finished by 2027, the province said, and will include five in Winnipeg school divisions:

• Two kindergarten to Grade 8 schools in Pembina Trails School Division.
• Two kindergarten to Grade 8 schools in Seven Oaks School Division.
• A kindergarten to Grade 8 school in River East Transcona School Division.

The other four will be:

• A kindergarten to Grade 12 French school in the Franco-Manitoban School Division.
• A kindergarten to Grade 8 school in Brandon School Division.
• A Grade 9 to 12 vocational school in Beautiful Plains School Division.
• A Grade 9 to 12 vocational school in Seine River School Division.

'Complicated' history of P3s

Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of geography and planning and director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, said using public-private partnerships to build schools has a mixed track record in Canada.

"The attractiveness is this idea of life cycle cost and value for money, and that's always what has been proposed. And when you look at these projects in more detail, the outcomes are actually far more complicated," he said.

In 2010, Nova Scotia's auditor general said the provincial education department's handling of public-private partnership contracts was costing the province millions of dollars more than necessary.

Siemiatycki said value for money in the partnerships is achieved through what's called risk transfer, where the private sector takes on the risk of things like construction cost overruns, delays or maintenance not living up to expectations.

But in practice, "what we've seen is a very mixed record of some of those risks coming back to government as the private sector either doesn't live up to its expectations or there's disputes about whether the standards are being met," he said.

In the case of building schools under the public-private model, Siemiatycki said it will also be important for Manitoba to make sure educational experts have input into how the buildings are designed.

A union representing more than 6,000 school support staff in the province says the move to build new schools under the model will hurt Manitoba schools.

Gina McKay, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Manitoba, said in a news release the fact that the province is reviving a model it previously said was less cost effective "shows that the [Premier Heather] Stefanson government is ideologically committed to a bad idea."

The release noted the Alberta government recently scrapped plans that would make the public-private approach the preferred way to build schools, and teachers at schools built under public-private parternships in Regina were told in 2018 they would not be allowed to open windows for a year or decorate more than 20 per cent of the walls.