Three decades, three growth eras
From the early projects of the 1990s, Canadian PPPs have now reached their third stage of development - one in which the Federal government is poised to play a greater role in coordinating private investment in the country's infrastructure
In 2010, public-private partnerships entered their third decade in Canada and, arguably, the most important phase of development.
Canadian governments began delivering their infrastructure projects with the help of private capital in earnest in the 1990s. The decade saw 20 individual projects enter procurement as PPPs, with all three levels of government inking their first deals.
On the federal level, the most prominent project was the government's 1993 sponsorship of a PPP to design, build and operate for 35 years a 12.8-kilometre bridge linking Prince Edward Island with mainland Canada. Prince Edward Island had made access to mainland Canada a condition of joining the Canadian Confederation in 1867. One hundred and thirty years later, when the $739 million Confederation Bridge opened for traffic, that condition was fulfilled for good.
In 1992, Peel, a regional government outside Toronto, inked the first municipal PPP: a $71 million trash incinerator that turns approximately 160,000 tonnes of residential waste into energy each year.