Imagine hiring a contractor to renovate your kitchen. He quotes you a price and then the final bill is nearly double. When you ask what went wrong, he shrugs. And he never shows you a final accounting.

You would fire that contractor, refuse to pay and warn your neighbours.

On Prince Edward Island, that contractor is the provincial government. And a recent report from Auditor General Darren Noonan proves it.

The auditor general examined 12 government construction projects. Eleven came in over budget. Combined costs ballooned from $81.5 million to $150.6 million. That’s an 85 per cent overrun.

It gets worse.

Nearly half of those overruns, about $29 million, were identified before construction even started. The government approved projects without knowing what they would cost because it had no minimum planning standards in place. Projects entered the capital budget half-baked and taxpayers paid the price.

Not one of the 12 projects received a post-completion review, even though Treasury Board rules require one within a year of completion. Islanders deserve to know whether they got value for that money. Right now, nobody in government can say.

Think about what that means. The Lantz government can’t tell Islanders what a project will cost before it starts and it won’t check what the project delivered after it finishes. That’s not responsible management. That’s a blank cheque, and taxpayers are the ones covering it.

These overruns would be a problem in good times. In P.E.I.’s current financial position, they’re reckless.

The Lantz government is borrowing $410 million this year, pushing the province’s debt up by nearly 20 per cent. It plans to pile on another $1.3 billion of debt over the next three years.

Interest charges now cost taxpayers $201 million every year. That works out to about $1,100 for every Islander. That’s money that won’t hire a nurse, pave a road or cut anyone’s taxes. It goes straight out the door to bond fund managers on Bay Street.

The auditor general already warned about where this is headed.

“The numbers I presented were really to highlight the increasing debt,” Noonan told a legislative committee last year. “It’s going to be a burden on future generations until we get a plan in place to deal with it.”

Every dollar wasted on a poorly planned construction project is a borrowed dollar. And every borrowed dollar comes with interest charges that Islanders will keep paying long after the ribbon cuttings are forgotten.

The fix isn’t complicated. The auditor general laid it out in four recommendations and the Lantz government should implement all of them immediately.

That starts with establishing minimum planning standards before any project enters the capital budget. No Island family would sign a construction contract without knowing the price. The government shouldn’t either.

It also means completing every overdue post-completion review. If the government never looks back at what projects actually cost, it will keep repeating the same mistakes with bigger price tags.

Island families have to live within their means. When the roof needs fixing, they get quotes, compare prices and hold the contractor to the deal. They don’t hand over a blank cheque and hope for the best.

Their government should be held to the same standard.

Premier Rob Lantz has a choice. He can keep approving half-baked projects and letting costs spiral or he can bring real discipline to capital spending before the debt grows even larger.

The auditor general has handed the government a roadmap. All the Lantz government has to do is follow it.

Islanders deserve better than blank cheques and budget blowouts. They deserve a government that treats their money with the same care they treat their own.