This month in the Senate, I tried to shed some light on three allegations that have been made about the active airport arrangements.

First, those who oppose what the Bermuda Government is doing say that failure to adhere to the tender process is preventing the island from getting the best deal possible.

Second, it is suggested that we would do better to renovate the present airport rather than build a new one.

And third, they claim that the Government has not been transparent about its interaction with Aecon and the Canadian Commercial Corporation, and continues to try to keep negotiations and details of the financial model being negotiated a secret from the taxpayers.

Recently, I carried out a survey of capital projects undertaken over the past 20 years. The conclusion that I was able to draw from the data is that, on average, the final bill for these projects was 86 per cent more than the approved bid price. Yes, you read that correctly — 86 per cent more.

Now tell us we would get a better deal from asking for tenders.

Cost overruns are the Achilles’ heel of the tender process; not only here, but around the world. That’s why governments in Europe, in Britain, in the United States, in Canada and elsewhere have been turning to public-private partnerships to try to keep large capital projects from overwhelming the ability of governments to pay for them. That is why we have gone the PPP route. That’s why the Progressive Labour Party government went that route with the new hospital project a few years ago.

With the new airport terminal estimated to cost somewhere in the region of $250 million, an 86 per cent cost overrun would let us in for another $215 million, bringing the total cost to nearly half a billion dollars. That would be hard to swallow at the best of times, but with our debt level as it is, it would be disastrous.

Some people think we should renovate the existing airport rather than build new. To those who consider such a suggestion as viable, bear this in mind: the cost of renovating the existing structure has been estimated to be $115 million. According to the Department of Airport Operations, if we were to upgrade it and modernise it to the standard we will expect of the new airport, including installing jet bridges, it would cost us an extraordinary $400 million.

This is money that the Government would have to borrow because we simply do not have it.

But there is more bad news. If capital projects cost 86 per cent more than we expected in cost overruns, our $115 million renovation would actually cost $214 million. We would still have the same old airport in the end, which most of us agree is not reflective of the quality of stay in Bermuda when viewed by our visitors. It would still be subject to hurricane storm surges. The funding would further impact our balance sheet and almost certainly cause the rating agencies to downgrade Bermuda.

When these facts were presented to the Senate, the response from the Opposition was not a denial of what is really undeniable, but a sideways attack that the Government has not been transparent and continues to keep confidential negotiations and details of the financial model being discussed with Aecon and CCC.

OK. To assess the strength of this criticism, I undertook a review of the project agreement between the Bermuda Hospitals Board and Paget Health Services Ltd, negotiated in December 2010. The project agreement and the ancillary papers forming the totality of the agreement are housed under lock and key at the library of the hospital, but upon request may be made available for public inspection.

My inspection of the project agreement was a revelation. It highlighted the extent to which the financial details contained in that document, now some 5½ years after it was finalised, remain obscure to the general public.

The word “redacted” is defined as “to censor or obscure for legal of security purposes”. When reviewing the project agreement, the word “redacted” appears in many key areas of the document, obscuring the fine — and sometimes not so fine — details of the financial model that the agreement puts in place.

For example, the aggregate number of failure points that would give rise to monitoring performance are redacted; the design and construction output specifications are wholly redacted; the financial model at schedule 15 is wholly redacted; the schedule dealing with the quality assurance plan is redacted; the level of E&O/liability insurance required of the independent certifier is redacted; the fixed and hourly fee of the independent certifier, and the identity of its team members are both redacted; the payment mechanism schedule is redacted of all references to quantum ... even details of the ownership of Paget Health Services are redacted.

Most surprisingly of all, schedule 18, which sets out the Government guarantee in relation to this project is wholly redacted with the following words appearing on an otherwise blank page: “Confidential to the parties to the agreement”. Yet the Government is on the hook.

Given the aforementioned, the criticisms made of the OBA government are reminiscent of the saying, “the lady doth protest too much”. A review of the project agreement between the BHB and Paget Health Services clearly exemplifies two things; first, that the PLP understands full well that certain financial models by their very nature work only if those who have formulated them are comfortable that competitors are not going to get a free ride by accessing them. Without such a protection, no one will enter into negotiations or advance for consideration a financial model that has merit; second, it shows that the PLP was anything but transparent in relation to the hospital project.

The reality is that the Minister of Finance has provided the public with as much information and as much transparency as is possible at the moment, without endangering active negotiations, which will lead ultimately to a new airport built without our balance sheet being detrimentally affected. It will be built on time and on budget. Unlike the hospital project, where the Government provided the guarantee, the promise of fiscal responsibility on the airport project has the full strength of the sovereign guarantee of the Canadian Government. Equally important, the finance minister has confirmed to me that the final agreement will not be shrouded in “redactions”.

• Georgia Marshall is the Government’s senate spokeswoman for justice