INTERVIEW PPP CANADA 

Raison d'etre

John McBride reveals his goals and aspirations for Canada's newest PPP organisation, PPP Canada

McBride: PPPs no longer ideological

CHATTING WITH JOHN McBride, one quickly gets the feeling he is right at home at the helm of PPP Canada. Twenty years ago, while working for the government in Ottawa, he helped arrange financing for the $739 million Confederation Bridge, the first public-private partnership (PPP) procured by the Federal government. Now, at PPP Canada, his job is to replicate that success all across the country.

"We focus at the Federal government level on the same issue: trying to deploy PPPs where they make sense," he says. The goal is not to be the "national end-all, be-all" for PPPs, but instead "a node and a network that helps connect everybody together".

Another Federal agency he headed, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, connected Canadian exporters together with importers in other countries. That often translated to trade missions focused on importing and exporting PPP expertise to and from Canada.

"The experience of other countries, the UK and Australia, were very instructive," he says. "But I think we're at the stage now where we've adapted them to our context."

That is, PPP Canada isn't just the name for an organisation: it's a way of procuring public services that's becoming increasingly ingrained in the country's business and political DNA. Canada can now claim a whole cottage industry of engineering and procurement firms like AECON, Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin who have "cut their teeth" on PPPs in other countries, McBride says.

That's to say nothing of its deep-pocketed pensions that have been investing in infrastructure since before the word became a household name during the Great Recession. And, most importantly, its provinces have welcomed private investment by setting up their own programmes to channel public resources to the best use through PPPs whenever they make sense.

"The successful experience of provinces was one of the prompts that drove the federal government to [create PPP Canada]," McBride says.