Group items tagged

Mr. Georgiou, 51, is a long-time senior public servant. Between 2006 and 2012, he held various executive positions at Infrastructure Ontario, the procurement agency that was set up to administer the McGuinty government's ambitious plans to restore the province's outdated infrastructure through public-private partnerships. He was a project manager on the construction of several major projects, including some of the facilities for this summer's Pan Am and Parapan Games, eventually rising to the role of chief administrative officer. How he ended up admitting he issued false invoices - and why that information was not passed on by at least one of his former colleagues at Infrastructure Ontario - dates back to 2009, after a whistleblower complained to management at York about questionable invoices.

Court records show the scheme required Mr. Georgiou to invoice the university, through two family-owned companies, for work that those companies never performed. After cashing York's cheques, he passed on about $40,000 of the total $65,000 paid by York to an intermediary who was connected to a facilities official at the university. Mr. Georgiou said he kept $25,000 to declare for income tax purposes. "Once these events came to light, I fully co-operated with the authorities and counsel for York University, and I assisted them with their investigation. In addition, I ensured that the party who requested the invoices, repaid the entire amount to York University," he said in the statement. He did not address questions about what he told St. Michael's, if anything, about his role in the scheme.

St. Michael's and Infrastructure Ontario have ordered forensic audits. "These swift and prudent actions have been taken by the Board of Directors and Management to preserve and protect the public trust invested in St. Michael's Hospital," a statement from St. Michael's said. In its own statement, Infrastructure Ontario said it was "very troubled" by some of the facts The Globe presented to four of its officials in an interview. "The activity in question goes against everything [Infrastructure Ontario] stands for," said Bert Clark, the agency's chief executive, and Linda Robinson, vice-chair of Infrastructure Ontario's board. Mr. Georgiou, who has been placed on a leave of absence from the hospital, said in an e-mail that The Globe had not provided him enough time to give proper answers to about 40 questions it e-mailed to him last Wednesday. In a statement, he said he never profited from the "exercise" at York and stressed that he was never charged criminally for his role in the false invoice scheme.

York investigated and concluded it had been the victim of a $1.2-million kickback scheme involving false invoices for nonexistent construction and maintenance work. A forensic audit determined that between 2007 and 2010, the university cut cheques to eight different companies for services that were never rendered. The York investigation found that two of those companies, Arsenal Facilities Consultants Inc. and Toronto Engineering Company, were connected to Mr. Georgiou. (He was the listed officer and director of AFC, and the other company was owned by his wife and her parents.) Mr. Georgiou and his lawyer, Gary Clewley, agreed to meet with auditors in February of 2011, and Mr. Georgiou admitted writing three false invoices totalling $64,800 between the two companies. The Globe has obtained a transcript of this meeting, which was marked "confidential" but included in court filings. Mr. Georgiou created paperwork showing that AFC did $22,000 worth of door lock repairs in November, 2007. In February, and then again in April, 2008, he drew up documents claiming that TECO completed a total of $42,800 worth of watermain work.

He wrote these invoices, he told investigators, at the request of a friend who had nothing to do with the university, a parking industry executive named Luigi Lato. According to Mr. Georgiou, Mr. Lato told him maintenance work had been performed and he was hoping Mr. Georgiou could create invoices for that work. But for reasons Mr. Lato never explained, Mr. Georgiou said, whoever did the work did not issue their own invoices. Mr. Georgiou said he believed Mr. Lato was doing a "favour" for a friend at York who needed to pay for the work. A lawyer and an auditor for York pressed Mr. Georgiou on why the companies that actually did this work would not, or could not, issue invoices, and Mr. Georgiou said he did not know.

"There were no details provided to me," he explained at one point. Pressed further, he said, "I didn't ask any questions." York paid AFC and TECO, but Mr. Georgiou told investigators he did not keep the money. He withheld about $25,000 to declare as income tax for both companies, which he said he paid. As for the rest of the money, he made two trips to see Mr. Lato in which he paid him a total of about $40,000 in cash. Mr. Lato could not be reached for comment.

William McDowell, a lawyer acting for York, asked Mr. Georgiou how the teller at his bank reacted when he withdrew $14,500 in cash for Mr. Lato's first instalment: "Doesn't your banker kind of squint when you go in and ask for $14,500 in cash?" Mr. Georgiou replied: "I didn't go into the bank and ask for $14,500 in cash, you know, like in one shot. I had, you know, some cash at home, went to the bank for some cash..." About a year later, on Jan. 26, 2012, York filed a statement of claim against all of the people and companies it believed had defrauded the university, including Mr. Georgiou. The same day, the university's general counsel, Harriet Lewis, met with a senior executive at Infrastructure Ontario, Bill Ralph, who at the time was the procurement agency's chief risk officer, both York and IO said in separate statements. Ms. Lewis informed Mr. Ralph that York had launched a lawsuit against Mr. Georgiou and others because of what the internal investigation uncovered.

Mr. Ralph did not respond to requests for comment. Two weeks after the meeting, Mr. Georgiou suddenly resigned. A few days later, the CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, David Livingston, announced in a company-wide e-mail that Mr. Georgiou was "leaving." The departure e-mail made reference to "various personal and family matters" Mr. Georgiou needed to address. "I know it was a tough decision for him, but I admire him for making it." Mr. Livingston did not respond to repeated requests for comment e-mailed to him and to his lawyer. After leaving IO, Mr. Livingston was appointed chief of staff in May, 2012, to Dalton McGuinty, then premier of Ontario. Mr. Livingston has been accused by Ontario Provincial Police of orchestrating a plan to purge government records after the controversial cancellation of two power plants. He has denied through his lawyer that he did anything wrong.

Employment lawyer Natalie MacDonald said a chief risk officer should give the board of directors any information that could damage the organization's reputation. A risk officer has a "duty to inform the board so it can make an informed decision," Ms. MacDonald said, speaking generally. But according to Infrastructure Ontario's organization chart, the chief risk officer reports directly to the CEO rather than to the board. In an interview last Wednesday, Ms. Robinson, the board vicechair, said the news that Mr. Georgiou had, at one time, been named a defendant in the lawsuit and admitted writing false invoices never made its way to the agency's board.

In April of 2012, Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Lato signed a settlement agreement with York that required them to pay restitution - the amount has not been disclosed in public documents - which Mr. Georgiou said in his statement to The Globe was covered by the "party" who requested the invoices. One of the conditions of the settlement is that York "shall not make any statements to the media" about the agreement or about allegations levelled in York's claim, except to say that Mr. Georgiou co-operated.

Seven months later, St. Michael's board meeting minutes show that it had identified a preferred candidate to replace its chief administrative officer, and in the New Year, Mr. Georgiou officially started his new job. In its statement, St. Michael's said an external search firm was enlisted to identify Mr. Georgiou, and a separate firm conducted reference interviews. The issues at York were "never disclosed by Mr. Georgiou," St. Michael's statement said.

In his statement to The Globe, Mr. Georgiou said he has led the hospital in securing government funding, as well as capital redevelopment funding. "During my tenure at St. Michael's we have achieved tremendous results for the hospital both in the excellence of our hospital's performance as well in the success of our redevelopment project."

The provincial government's statistics also show the length of stay at nursing homes is getting longer and the average age of residents is getting older.

The cash-strapped province is reviewing a five-year, $400-million infrastructure plan that would have replaced and renovated the stock of nursing homes.

Even nursing home projects that were already approved were reviewed to search for any possible cost savings and the remainder of the plan has been subjected to the internal review.

There are 4,140 residents in the province’s 65 nursing homes. But there are more than 700 seniors occupying hospital beds because there are no beds available in nursing homes. There were also 719 seniors on waiting lists for nursing homes on March 31, 2010, and those lists are expected to grow longer every year.

The infrastructure challenges being faced by the province's nursing homes are not new. The Department of Social Development's statistics show there were 73 infractions found during nursing home inspections in 2008. That number fell to 63 in 2010.

But the declining state of New Brunswick’s nursing homes burst into the open earlier this year when two facilities were forced to cope with mould outbreaks.

Mill Cove is like many other nursing homes in New Brunswick. It was constructed in the 1960s and it received a series of additions in the last 50 years to meet growing demands. The patchwork of upgrades has led to some of its current problems.

The costs of those ongoing battles to maintain the aging infrastructure, buy new equipment to improve the quality of life for residents and meet the standards of patient care are all adding up. “We are seeing the costs to maintain the facility go up each year,” Dickson said.

The facility’s chief executive officer said the myriad problems facing the nursing home prove a replacement building is not a luxury in an otherwise austere time. “It is a not a 'nice to have,' it is a 'must have' for us right now,” Dickson said.

The massive CPP Fund had $282.6 billion worth of assets at the end of 2015. Wiseman’s speech noted more than 75 per cent of its investments were made outside Canada, including about $7 billion in Australia.

Andrew McNeill, a researcher for one of Canada’s biggest unions, believes it’s basically another name for privatization, which he says has negative connotations.

That did little to quell critics who said the NDP has given up even the pretense of trying to rein in spending. Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister said the government could have balanced the books this year if it had "just held the line on spending." "They are making promises with money they are taking from our children and grandchildren here," the Opposition leader said. "It took 109 years for us as a province to get about $18-billion into debt. It's taken six for the premier and the NDP to double that debt. Somebody's got to pay that back." Todd MacKay, prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the "overwhelmingly irresponsible budget" shows the New Democrats have a spending problem. "They promised to have this budget balanced. Instead, the deficit is going up," he said.

"Future generations are going to pay for this budget. It's completely irresponsible." The infrastructure spending wasn't enough to win over others. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said it will do little to help the province's largest city. "We need new money. The model is ... fundamentally broken in terms of how we fund our cities," he said. "We have an obligation to fix it." The NDP tries to leave behind internal turmoil that led to a leadership race in March which Mr. Selinger won by 33 votes. The Premier's top five cabinet ministers resigned last year after calling for him to step down in light of plummeting opinion polls following the provincial sales-tax increase. "The government has obviously been preoccupied with something else over the past eight months and has not been focused on governing," said Chuck Davidson, president of the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce. "This was a great opportunity to at least get us on a path ... to getting our economic house in order. They missed the mark."

? full privatization: where a government enterprise is sold in full to private investors. ? publicly funded with services and management delivered privately, sometimes unknown to the consumer. ? public funding of private services: government provides vouchers to consumers for the purchase of goods and services from private providers.

? public/private partnerships (P3s): full outside contracting, management and service delivery of traditionally delivered public services such as hospitals, roads, schools and prisons. This can include private finance, design, building, operation and possibly temporary ownership of an asset. Can privatization deliver? After decades of experimentation with privatization in different forms across Canada, the data is clear on the failure to deliver on its promises and the high cost society pays - multiple costs, not only in economic terms but also quality and access to services, quality and quantity of jobs, as well as transparency and accountability.

Public/private partnerships (P3s) are the fastest-growing model of privatization in Canada. The P3 models vary but all include the reliance on private sector borrowing to finance the development of public infrastructure projects in a long-term lease arrangement; it is effectively leasing rather than owning and sometimes that lease includes maintenance as well. P3s cost more. Governments have always been able to borrow money more cheaply than private corporations. According to a University of Toronto study of 28 P3 projects in Ontario, P3s cost, on average, 16 per cent more than a traditional public contract. A recent auditor general of Ontario report found that P3 projects cost the province $8 billion more than if they were done under the traditional model.

If they cost more, why do politicians promote them? Political expediency - in P3 lease agreements the debt stays off the books or is postponed for decades. P3s hide debt - which is a dream for politicians looking for easy wins in hard economic times. It is also ideological and it is about private sector lobbying and influence. Public services are a boon to private sector deliverers with guaranteed public payments and profit margins over the long term. Supporters of privatization claim that it leads to better pricing for the public as consumers. A comparison of privately owned Manitoba Telecom Services, privatized in 1997, to SaskTel, Saskatchewan's publicly owned telecommunications crown corporation shows this to not be true. Twenty years after privatization of MTS, the cost of a basic phone with SaskTel is $8 less per month than from MTS.

Private corporations demand a shroud of confidentiality in order to protect their competitive position. This means that privatization reduces both transparency and accountability. An example of this is the Ontario privatization of municipal water testing which has been linked to the May 2000 bacterial contamination of municipal water in Walkerton, Ont., led to the deaths of at least seven people and the serious illness of 2,300 more from water contaminated with E. coli. The absence of criteria governing quality of testing, and the lack of provisions made for notification of results to authorities contributed to the worst public health disaster involving municipal water in Canadian history.

Health care is a sector where there is huge pressure on government to control cost, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador with the aging demographic. Private interests see great profit opportunities. But in health care, for-profit does not deliver. In Manitoba, living in a for-profit long-term care facility increased the odds of dying in hospital or being hospitalized.

In a metadata analysis of hospitals in the U.S., Dr. Philip Devereaux, a cardiologist at McMaster University, concluded that the death rate in for-profit hospitals was two per cent higher than in not-for-profit facilities. In Alberta, the Health Quality Council of Alberta's Long Term Care Family Experience Survey in 2012 found that, on average, private and volunteer operated facilities offered poorer quality in terms of staffing levels, care of residents' belongings, and assistance with daily living activities such as toileting, drinking and eating, than publicly operated ones.

The scathing Ontario auditor general report indicates that there needs to be extensive and comprehensive reviews of provincial privatization projects. Until proper cost-benefit analyses and public reviews and reform of private funding and procurement models occur, governments and public bodies should place moratoria on further public-private infrastructure contracts. The citizens pay either way, but they pay more in a privatized model - either as tax payers or out of pocket.

The government has alternatives. The Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour has published a number of reports and fact sheets on the progressive revenue options open to the provincial government. There are a variety of progressive revenue options open to municipalities as well. There are no silver bullets. It is time to stop stigmatizing government and public services and recognize them for what they are: the way we pool our resources to buy services cheaper, control costs, and maintain accountability for quality.

his should be a debate based on evidence, not ideology. Mary Shortall, president, Unifor Local 597

It is not wrong for cities to care for their employees. But leaving these costs to the cities makes about as much sense as requiring every homeowner to maintain the roads and infrastructure surrounding their properties. Just as would happen if infrastructure were left to individual homeowners, the system that leaves drug coverage to individual patients and employers - including cities - creates an unco-ordinated patchwork. Most cities provide coverage, but some can't afford to. Some workers qualify for coverage, but some don't.

The same pattern plays out in cities, hospitals, schools and businesses across the country. As a result, millions of Canadians are without drug coverage and one in 10 Canadians cannot afford to fill their prescriptions. This patchwork is inequitable and profoundly inefficient because it fails to place responsibility for drug coverage and costs with the right level of government.

Provinces and the federal government are responsible for Canada's health-care system. They are best suited to manage access to medicines as an integral part of health care for all Canadians. They are also best positioned to reduce waste and overspending on pharmaceuticals. Having multiple drug plans operating in every province - including multiple private plans for public-sector employees - needlessly duplicates administrative costs. This fragmentation also diminishes Canadians' purchasing power on the global market for pharmaceuticals. Provincial governments wield about $10 billion in purchasing power when negotiating rebates for prescription drugs. This reduces public drug-plan costs by millions of dollars, but it does not lower costs for cities and other organizations that insure their workers through private drug plans that are minuscule in comparison. No matter how hard they try, cities would have about as much chance of negotiating competitive drug prices as homeowners would have of securing the best prices for infrastructure planning, engineering and construction.

Some things are best done through well-planned, population-level procurement processes. A recent study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows how a universal public drug plan run by the provinces could provide all Canadians coverage for prescription drugs while saving taxpayers $7 billion per year. Such a program would end the downloading of prescription drug costs to local governments and thereby allow cities to better address problems like traffic, housing and crime.

The federal and provincial governments should take responsibility for our prescription drug problem by implementing universal pharmacare for all Canadians. Doing so would support the health and wellbeing of public-and private-sector workers alike at far lower cost than Canadians are paying for our disorganized, patchwork system today. Steve Morgan is a health policy professor at the school of population and public health at the University of B.C.

The standard P3 procurement process in most cases involves an independent fairness monitor to oversee the selection phase.

The allegations against Mr. Duhaime and another former SNC executive have shaken the financial community and raised questions about the P3 process,

and Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty stood before packed ballrooms and extolled the benefits of building infrastructure through private and public funding

"Rotund, funny and occasionally pompous, Dr. Porter was everyone's friend and nobody's confidante, the life of the party and an agile dancer, both in political circles and around a ballroom floor. A member of Air Canada's board of directors, he travelled the world free. His former friend Prime Minister Stephen Harper had him sworn in as a member of the Privy Council so he could serve as chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, the country's spy watchdog agency. "And he was close to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, a relationship that began in 2004 when the politician, a neurosurgeon by training, was provincial health minister. Like many of Dr. Porter's friendships, theirs ended with the news of the hospital's megacost overrun and a $22.5-million fraud inquiry connected to the MUHC's decision to award the construction contract to a consortium led by the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.

""In a way, Arthur was like Icarus, who came crashing down to earth when his wax wings melted because he flew too close to the sun," Jeff Todd, an Ottawabased journalist who first met Dr. Porter in the Bahamas and co-authored the memoir, said. ""He told me that if he did anything wrong, it was to go way too fast," Mr. Todd continued. "There was never a peak he didn't want to climb and if there was a huge challenge, he always thought he would simply fly over it. But he couldn't always do that." "The first indication was in November, 2011, when the National Post revealed he had signed a commercial agreement the year before with Ari BenMenashe, a Montreal-based Israeli security consultant and arms dealer, all while he was head of both the MUHC and Canada's spy watchdog. Mr. BenMenashe was to secure a $120million grant from Russia for "infrastructure development" in Sierra Leone. In return, a company called the Africa Infrastructure Group, which was controlled by Dr. Porter's family, would manage what he wrote were "bridges, dams, ferries and other infrastructure projects" built with the Russian money.

"Within days, he was gone from SIRC. Less than a month later, he resigned from the MUHC, departing on the grounds that he had accomplished what he had set out to do in 2004: bring together a private-public partnership and get a long-dreamed-of facility built. "Unbeknownst to the public at the time, under his watch, a planned project deficit of $12million had somehow escalated to $115-million. "The following year, fraud charges were laid, but by then Dr. Porter was on to other projects and living in a gated community in the Bahamas, where he had maintained a home for years. After Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest, he and his wife, Pamela Mattock Porter, were detained June, 2013, by authorities at Tocumen International Airport in Panama City. "Despite claiming he could not be arrested because he was on a diplomatic mission for Sierra Leone, he was soon confined to overcrowded quarters in a wing reserved for foreigners in filthy La Joya prison. Toting an oxygen tank, he became known there as "Doc," ministering to inmates who included drug dealers and murderers. The man who had begun his ascent to the top as a doctor beloved by his patients would end at the bottom as a doctor beloved by his patients again.

"He was smart, perhaps too smart for his own good, and affable, with an ability to zero in on the most powerful person in the room with laser-like focus. His long-time friend and former teacher Karol Sikora, who partnered with Dr. Porter in a Bahamian medical clinic and is also the medical director of their joint private health-care company, Cancer Partners UK, said he was uncannily good at getting people together everywhere he touched down, even if they had opposing views. ""People like that are rare and they are very good at running big institutions," Dr. Sikora said. ""Arthur reached the peak of his career in 2010, when he was all glowing and bigger than sliced bread. Then it all went wrong." "Although Dr. Porter claimed the money from SNC was payment for other consulting work he'd done for them, his friend opined that the truth will probably never come out now. ""I'd like to think Arthur was never part of this monkey business, but we'll never know," he said.

"Others were not so kind. Responding to news of his death, the MUHC issued a terse statement that extended condolences to his family and offered no further comment, while Mr. Harper suspended the protocol that would have seen the Peace Tower flag fly at half-mast to mark the death of a Privy Council member. "In prison, living in unsanitary surroundings and denied proper treatment in a hospital for the cancer that many doubted he had, Dr. Porter, who leaves his father, sister, wife and four daughters, was outwardly still full of bravado until near the end. ""I just have to survive and make do," he told CBC reporter Dave Seglins in a phone interview in March that revolved around his treatment at the prison and his successful complaint to the United Nations torture watchdog that his human rights were being trampled on. ""[The] water, food, bedding and the fact that one has to urinate in a bucket shared by about 50 to 100 people ... for someone who has an illness and needs treatment, it was pretty obvious, I presume, the UN clearly found in my favour." "In addition, Dr. Porter continued, his raspy voice rising, he had not had a single court hearing in 22 months.

"I've never left here to go into the city. I have no idea what the inside of a courtroom looks like, not in Panama, Canada, the Bahamas or anywhere," he cried. "I've never been to court in my life." "In the end, though, he seemed to be aware that the stain on his reputation would not be erased, not even in death. ""My entire life has been devoted to climbing, winning and succeeding," he wrote in his memoir. "But with the end drawing near, it is inevitable that I, like anyone else, wonder if what I have accomplished truly matters. I wonder how I will be remembered." "To submit an I Remember: obit@globeandmail.com Send us a memory of someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page. Please include I Remember in the subject field.

"In his memoir, Dr. Porter said his life was 'devoted to ... winning.' " "Arthur Porter, left, chats with Stephen Harper at Montreal General Hospital in 2006. The Prime Minister had Dr. Porter sworn in as a member of the Privy Council.

And what can be said of Mr. Harper's contempt for Canadian scientists? Under his rule, federal expenditures on university research have put Canada near the top of the global rankings for publicly funded research and development. The Conservative Leader clearly believes the state has no place in basic research. Why else would his government give the Canadian Institutes of Health Research $1-billion a year, or provide the Canadian Foundation for Innovation with $1.3-billion to support research infrastructure at postsecondary institutions and hospitals?

Mr. Harper's war on state-funded science includes the $243-million he has promised to fund Canada's participation in the Thirty Meter Telescope project; the extra $45-million awarded this year to the TRIUMF cyclotron particle accelerator; the $105-million committed to enable scientists to collaborate on research through the CANARIE cloud-computing network; and the $15-million promised to the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct "science-based assessments." The GM and Chrysler bailouts set the tone for the Harper government's hard line on corporate welfare. It has been a dry well ever since. Most recently, this unyielding insensitivity toward the pleas of manufacturers has manifested itself in a $300-million loan to Pratt & Whitney Canada to develop jet engines and a $60-million loan to Toyota to upgrade two auto plants in Ontario.

The Harper Tories have shown their disdain toward the Liberal fetish for picking winners by boosting (after renaming) a smorgasbord of industrial policy slush funds, including the $1-billion Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative and the Automotive Innovation Fund. The latter's $250-million annual kitty was increased to $500-million a year for two years in the 2014 budget. The Harper government's clean-tech fund, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, has doled out $740-million so far, with hundreds of millions more still to go out the door. No wonder the Liberals and New Democrats have been calling for the state to re-engage with business to boost Canadian innovation. After all, the Tories abdicated their responsibility in this area by conducting the most comprehensive review of federal support for private-sector research in decades and implementing the main recommendations of a 2011 expert panel's report on the matter. The Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Credit, which cost $3.5-billion annually and had been subject to much abuse, was scaled back by about $500million - with most of the savings plowed into direct grants to businesses, just as the experts ordered.

It's debatable whether any of this largesse has made Canada's economy more competitive or innovative. No amount of state support can compensate for a lack of vision or guts among businesses. It's not for a lack of trying by Ottawa that innovation policies that seem to work elsewhere aren't replicable here. The state can go only so far to substitute for the private sector's listlessness. To wit, firms in the oil patch are reacting to tough times by cutting R&D, which is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing right now. They should know only innovation can save them.

Now, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is vowing to "invest in Canada" by doubling infrastructure spending, while NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair promises to be a "champion" of manufacturing (subsidies). They have big shoes to fill. Both would be hard-pressed to outdo Mr. Harper, who, if you haven't gleaned by now, has turned out to be as much of a meddler as any Liberal who preceded him.

The NDP plan to hike corporate taxes could be a flashpoint in the debate as both the Conservatives and Liberals oppose it, saying it would be bad for the economy. The Conservatives are campaigning on their April budget, which cut taxes and promised balanced budgets and more infrastructure spending over the coming years. The NDP say they would balance the books as well, but would fund new programs with roughly $7-billion a year in tax increases, including raising the corporate tax rate to 17 per cent from 15 per cent.

On taxation, an NDP government led by Mr. Mulcair says it expects $3.7-billion a year from the corporate tax increase, making it the single biggest source of new revenue in the party's costing plan. "The NDP's fiscal plan that we have announced today is balanced and it is progressive," Andrew Thomson, a former Saskatchewan finance minister who is running for the NDP against Conservative candidate Joe Oliver in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, told reporters at an afternoon news conference. Mr. Oliver is the Finance Minister in the Tory government. But questions quickly emerged Wednesday as to whether the corporate-tax estimate may prove optimistic, given that corporations could shift profit to countries with lower rates.

The Liberals are planning to run deficits for three years to fund major investments in infrastructure, but have not released specific spending and revenue figures for each year. The New Democrats are locked in a tight three-way battle with both the Conservatives and the Liberals as the election campaign enters its final month.

In the document, the NDP says it will rely heavily on a twopoint increase to the corporate tax rate on Jan. 1 as a key source of revenue to pay for billions in new spending on health transfers, daycare spaces and new infrastructure. The party says it can do all of this while planning for surpluses of at least $3-billion a year in each year of a fouryear mandate. The NDP says the document is not the party's full platform, as it still plans to make more detailed announcements throughout the campaign. Critics questioned the New Democrats' reliance on the April budget numbers to project surpluses given that forecasts for economic growth have since been lowered substantially, which will lead to less federal revenue.

With the economy at the top of the list of issues on the minds of voters, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair hopes to persuade Canadians that he is a prudent fiscal manager, and someone who can chart a course to prosperity without driving up debt. The seven-page document released Wednesday in Ottawa includes a chart titled "A balanced plan," but total new spending and total new revenue are not in balance. The chart lists seven sources of new revenue, which add up to $7.2-billion in 2016-17 and increase to $7.5-billion in 2019-20. The chart also lists eight categories of new spending, which add up to $5.8billion in the first year and rise to $11.3-billion in the fourth year.

Over all, the lack of detailed information provided by the New Democrats made it difficult to determine whether their numbers add up. But, it was clear that some of the promises being made by the NDP Leader have had to be modified to meet his commitment of a balanced budget. Since late 2011, NDP politicians have accused the Conservative government of planning to cut $36-billion over 10 years from health care, starting in 2017-18, by replacing the annual 6-percent increases in health transfers to the provinces with increases based on the growth in nominal gross domestic product.

The New Democrats have said they would reverse that decision. And Peggy Nash, the party's industry critic, told reporters on Wednesday that the 6-percent increases to transfers would be restored. But, she said, they would be used to pay for the slate of new health-care initiatives included in the NDP campaign platform such as a mental-health innovation fund, a half-billion dollars over four years for new clinics and to hire doctors and nurses, an Alzheimer's strategy, a seniors-care strategy and whatever other health announcements Mr. Mulcair has yet to make. Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins said the Conservative decision to slash the Canada Health Transfer would result in $8-billion less for health care for Ontario over 10 years and accused the New Democrats of making health-care decisions without provincial input. Absent from the NDP document is a major pledge to increase foreign aid. Mr. Mulcair had promised in May to set a multiyear target to increase foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP, a pledge that could cost more than $8-billion a year if fully implemented. The party confirmed Wednesday that the foreign-aid target will not be met during the first mandate of an NDP government.

Canada's federal corporate tax rate had declined to 21 per cent between 2000 and 2007 from 30 per cent in 1980. It has since declined gradually under the Conservatives to 15 per cent as of 2012.

Private project managers also tend to charge higher legal and management fees. As well, they must return profits to their owners. Aficionados of public-private partnerships insist that while all of this may be true, privately managed projects are far more likely to come in on time and under budget. That is the argument used by Infrastructure Ontario, the body charged with handling public-private deals. It says that if the 74 projects had been handled by the public sector, delays and overruns would have cost taxpayers - in net terms - about $6 billion more. It also says that publicly managed projects are five times more likely to come in over budget than privately managed ones. Is any of this true? Lysyk is not convinced. She points out that Infrastructure Ontario has no empirical evidence to back up its claims and instead bases them on the judgment of outside advisers who, her report says, make their case "anecdotally" and tend to cast publicly managed projects "in a negative light." She also notes that Infrastructure Ontario's initial cost estimates for public-private partnerships are systematically inflated. One result (which she is too polite to mention) is that private-public schemes usually appear to come in under budget. That makes everyone look good.

The Liberals may be the grand priests of private-public partnerships. But they are not the only ones to embrace this particular theology. In the 1990s, Bob Rae's New Democratic Party government famously arranged for a private consortium to finance, build and operate Highway 407, largely to avoid saddling the province with $1 billion more in debt. Yet in the end, the Rae government had to borrow the $1 billion itself - and then pass it on to the consortium. The private-sector partners just couldn't raise the cash as cheaply. Little has changed since then. On the face of it, public-private partnerships seem a good way to save money. In reality, as Lysyk has confirmed, they usually cost taxpayers more. Thomas Walkom is a news services columnist.