Mr. Allred: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The St. Albert Protestant school board has been working with a private developer to provide a new school in Erin Ridge North, a new subdivision in St. Albert, for three years now. The developer is proposing a P3 where there would be no government capital required and would follow the standard 30-year payback. My question to the Minister of Education is: what seems to be the delay in getting the proposal approved?

Mr. Hancock: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't discuss the specifics of a particular proposal by a developer, but I would say this: there's always money involved, and I don't have any.

The longer answer, Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier in the House, is that we have to develop alternative ways of developing capital. This is a very good proposal. I've encouraged the developer and the school board to work on the proposal, and I will be working with Treasury Board to get permission to do alternative capital programs as and when they make sense and as and when we can put them into our capital plan.

Mr. Allred: Mr. Speaker, to the same minister. The private P3 concept seems to be a win-win situation for everyone involved. The school gets a new facility, the first one in 20 years, the developer has a school in this new subdivision, and the government has no up-front capital costs. What is the downside to this proposal?

Mr. Hancock: Mr. Speaker, it's a good proposal. In fact, it's an excellent proposal. We need to do some work on sharpening the pencils and getting the numbers into the area where we could go out to the public and say that this has the best value we could possibly get because there's no other way to do a one-off project. It's either an RFP, where everybody gets to bid, or we can clearly demonstrate the value of the project. We can work on that, but there's no point in getting to that stage until I can work with Treasury Board and with government on our capital policy process because at the end of the day it has to fit into the long-term capital plan. It has to be funded.

Mr. Allred: Mr. Speaker, my final question to the same minister. The government of Alberta has adopted P3s for massive schools in Edmonton and Calgary. Is the government not prepared to consider a single, individual, private P3 proposal?

Mr. Hancock: Mr. Speaker, I would hope very much that we would be able to consider those. I just have to find the right process and the right way to fit it into our capital plan so that a project which is a very valuable project, which could be done at considerable savings to government and the school board, which can serve that commu­nity very well, can also fit into our capital planning process because at the end of the day, whether it's spending this year or next year or three years out or five years out, it is spending, it is investment, and it needs to be accounted for. We need to align those processes. We haven't quite got it to the stage where we can align those processes, but I'm working on it.