and Saskatchewan’s former Deputy
Minister for the Ministry of Highways and
Infrastructure. “This is an area where we’re
under increasing pressure to do better. As
a country, we have lost ground. And this is
not an area where you can take a break. The
world is moving fast on this and there are
a lot of markets out there that have an in-creasing
number of choices.
“There’s an urgency here that will mani-fest
itself in terms of our ability to retain our
quality of life and the jobs that we rely on.”
Law feels there is an important role avail-able
for the private sector that historically
has not been as well recognized. The pri-vate
sector has been the builder of much
of the infrastructure in the trade and trans-port
sector in the country. They now have
a vested interest in the operation in these
facilities.
Government, in Law’s opinion, does not
have to shoulder the load when it comes
to infrastructure planning, as evidenced by
the growing number of public-private part-nerships
(P3s). In fact, the private sector
has a seat at the table in a few of the leading
jurisdictions in the world. Countries like
Australia, Great Britain and Netherlands
have made significant advances with trade
and transport infrastructure, and the pri-vate
sector has played a pivotal role.
“We need, in this country, to provide a
way to have a meaningful and sustainable
role for the private sector to ensure that
their skills and resources and expertise are
at the table,” said Law. “This is now a best
practice recognized by many of our trade
competitors as one of the key features in
getting this right. It’s taking the best that
you can glean from the public and private
sectors and putting them together and le-veraging
the respective strengths of both
FEATURE
HENRYK SADURA/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
26 Think BIG | Quarter 2 2017 | saskheavy.ca
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