Fate of public-private school builds uncertain under NDP

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This article was published 10/11/2023 (1073 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The fate of nine new schools the Manitoba Tories promised to build through a public-private partnership remains uncertain under the province’s new NDP government.

One of the schools the former Progressive Conservative government had announced is a Grade 9-12 vocational school in Neepawa, which was designed to welcome at least 500 students and create 74 child-care spaces. Another is a kindergarten to Grade 8 school in Brandon’s southwest sector, which would accommodate a minimum of 700 students and 74 child-care spaces.

Premier Wab Kinew has tasked Nello Altomare, the province’s new education minister, with bringing in legislation that would protect schools, according to a mandate letter issued last month.

The former Progressive Conservative government committed to building 20 new schools over 10 years. Fourteen of these schools have either been completed, are under construction, or in design. The province worked with the relevant school divisions to build the remaining six schools, plus three additional schools. Those nine schools were to be delivered as a single project through a bundled approach that the Tories claimed would provide optimal value and allow all of the new schools to be operational in 2027. The Tories planned to utilize a public-private partnership (P3) procurement model to build the schools.

Now, Kinew says P3 accountability is necessary, similar to legislation that was passed by the previous NDP government in 2012. The Tories repealed that legislation — which required a preliminary analysis of the cost and benefits, public consultations and the release of a report from the public-sector entity — in 2017.

Former education minister and Tory education critic Wayne Ewasko told the Sun that some of the benefits of P3 builds include cost-savings and risk taken on by the private sector.

The Sun contacted the NDP with a request to interview Altomare, but was granted an interview with Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor instead.

“Both in my mandate letter and then the Minister of Education’s mandate letter, there is a reference to reviewing the legislation related to the P3 build from the province,” Naylor said.

The first session of the 43rd Legislature of Manitoba began yesterday, and Naylor said she wasn’t aware of any legislation that would immediately move forward regarding P3 builds.

“I’m just in the process of reviewing those contracts, so that we understand what the previous government negotiated and make sure that these are in the best interest of Manitoba,” she said.

As the Sun previously reported, the new school in Brandon would provide some level of relief to the Brandon School Division, which has recently relied on modular classrooms to deal with its overcrowding problem at facilities like Maryland Park School.

The Neepawa area has undergone a dramatic population spike throughout the past decade, with much of the community growth fuelled by Filipino families arriving to work at the HyLife Foods hog processing plant. To help make some space for an incoming wave of pupils, the Beautiful Plains School Division even opened a new Grade 5 to 8 facility (Neepawa Middle School) in early 2020 to take some pressure off Neepawa Area Collegiate.

The Sun contacted the office of Jodie Byram, MLA for Agassiz, but was unable to connect with her for an interview.

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