The lack of other options and a skewed repayment formula make the Lansdowne Partnership Proposal a bad deal for Ottawa residents, say the authors of two academic reports released at the annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association.
The first, by political science PhD candidates at the University of Ottawa, examines the nature of the public-private partnership in this deal.
Good governance dictates before entering into a PPP arrangement, government should first do a cost comparison to determine if working with the private sector would be more affordable than going alone, said co-author Pierre-Andre Hudon. The only option the city presented was doing a PPP with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
The other report, produced by three professors at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration, looked at how city government managed the development process.
There should have been a consultation on the general direction of Lansdowne Park at the start of the process, as opposed to a pseudo-public consultation that collected reactions to a single unsolicited bid, said co-author and Carleton Prof. Robert Hilton.
