No one’s asking good questions about Iqaluit airport P3

Last Tuesday, I was fiddling with the radio in my vehicle, and I accidentally tuned into question period in the Legislative Assembly.

An MLA, Joe Enook I think, was asking questions to the minister of Economic Development and Transportation concerning the proposed new airport for Iqaluit.

The topic immediately caught my attention, since the new Iqaluit Airport is one of the biggest projects in memory for Nunavut, and will be completed by way of a public private partnership, or P3, a relatively new model for the financing and construction of large public infrastructure projects in Canada.

However, as excited as I was about the topic, I was equally disappointed by the questions asked by Mr. Enook.

In his first question, he asked generally about the status of the project and, in his second, he inquired as to whether the government had hired a project manager.

The problem with his questions is that they assume that nothing else important needs to be asked concerning this P3 venture, and all that the public wants or needs to know is simply whether the GN is “getting on with it.”

As a taxpayer, a consumer, and mortgage holder, one thing that I have learned in life is that nothing comes for free. As a result, I expected the questions from Mr. Enook to be:

“Can the government commit to saying that the cost to build this new airport will not be substantially higher under the P3 model than if the government financed construction on it’s own?”

Or.

“Can the government confirm the proposed P3 model will not result in airport user fees for an already overburdened Nunavut air traveller?”

What might concern me even more could be an answer from the minister being that we have absolutely nothing to worry about because it is all in the capable hands of Partnerships BC, a British Columbia agency the GN is paying to see the project through.

In that hypothetical, I think the citizens of Nunavut would deserve a little more information on this given that the B.C. Golden Ears Bridge project, a project coordinated by Partnerships BC as a P3 some time ago, almost collapsed and required a substantial bailout from British Columbia taxpayers.

In closing, I would love to see a new airport, and I am not trying to be some cynical naysayer or critic.

However, some important questions need to be asked here, which go beyond whether a project manager has yet been hired.

(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit

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