Privatization of public assets Mr. Peter Tabuns: My question is to the Premier. On page 4 of the Liberal Party’s infrastructure platform—and I took a look at it again this morning—it clearly says this government’s plan is to pocket $3.15 billion from the sale of public assets. Neither you, Premier, nor the Minister of Finance have explained how much of this money is going to come from the sale of all or part of the LCBO, Ontario Power Generation or Hydro One. Will the Premier finally tell the House how much is slotted into the government’s fiscal framework from the full or partial sale of these core public assets? 1100 Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Finance. Hon. Charles Sousa: We are doing a full review of our assets—for LCBO, OLG and OPA. We’re looking at all of our assets, including real estate and those shares that we own in private companies, and we’re going to ensure that we maximize opportunity to increase dividends to the province of Ontario, and to the taxpayers who own these organizations. It’s prudent for us to do so. The member, I appreciate, has looked at some of the numbers, and he’ll be able to reflect on the fact that the valuations of many of these organizations are tremendous. What we want to do is safeguard the public interest and be fully transparent in the things that we do. In the meantime, some of the things that we are going to roll out are very quick to suggest: some of the real estate that is owned by the province, and some of the shares that we own, as well. That is part of what we are going to be doing in the short term. The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary. Mr. Peter Tabuns: Well, Speaker, that was hardly an answer. Let’s face it: When you put that figure into your platform, someone, hopefully, had a sense of the ballpark value of what would be coming from those different asset sales. How much of that $3.15 billion from the sale of the LCBO, OPG and Hydro One is allocated to those assets, or was your number just a guess in the platform? Hon. Charles Sousa: We’re unlocking value of our assets. We’re not suggesting that we’re going to sell any three of those organizations that you’ve just mentioned. We want to maximize the potential of the revenue generated from those organizations. We are looking at assets that can be sold in the short term. I’ve just stated that there’s a number of properties and real estate that we own as a landlord that are unproductive. We also have shares in various companies that, again, are passive, and they can be better reinvested into the Trillium Trust to produce transportation and infrastructure—things that make us competitive. Those are tabulated, and those will be the things that we are going to release. It would be inappropriate for me to suggest anything until the review has been done. Furthermore, it’s also implicating the public interest by going public with some of the valuations of these companies. That too is inappropriate. We are looking after the public interest, and we will continue to do so.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 15:26:43 +0000
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