Affordability is certainly the word of today’s reality. In the midst of this reality governments, particularly Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government, is pushing affordability further and further out of reach.
Setting up special committees of experts is a favourite ploy of Conservative governments, typically called “Blue Ribbon Panels”. The latest committee of experts set up by Ford is the Panel for Utility leadership and service Excellence (PULSE). The committee is to focus on operational efficiency, explore consolidation and new ownership models. It is a foregone conclusion this panel will recommend private investment (privatization) for Ontario’s 60 municipal utilities that were packaged up for sale by former Conservative premier Mike Harris.
We’ve seen what happened when Mike Harris set up the Advisory Committee on Competition in Ontario’s electricity system in 1996. A Goldblatt Partners lawyer reviewed the report which was summed up in one sentence: “It’s just a way to drag profit out of the public system.”
In 1998 Harris legislated that all municipal utilities were to be changed from non-profit commissions into for-profit corporations. When that happened to Hydro and electricity was put under a deregulated electricity market, rates quickly doubled, tripled and by the time Ford is elected in 2018 rates quadrupled.
Those rate increases are hidden by Ford’s electricity rebate program which now costs over $8 billion a year. Using the exact same language, the PULSE committee is to look for increased efficiencies, to modernize and review governance models. All code for privatization. If municipal utilities are further privatized, hydro rates will only go one way, up.
Most people don’t know their water is being privatized.
Very quietly and very quickly, just before Christmas Ford, with no debate rammed through Bill 60, the Fighting delays, building faster Act 2025, a gigantic omnibus bill.
Hidden in omnibus Bill 60 is a new Act called Water and Waste Water Public Corporations Act. This legislation will enable the privatization of water. It gets worse. Bill 60 combined with previously passed Bill 56, which removed local autonomy from local water systems and gave the minister the power to make changes without any public input or democratic oversight.
Ford is following the exact same pathway as hydro deregulation. These bills give the government the power to turn publicly owned municipal water works into for profit corporations, packaging them up for sale. Ford is starting with the highest population regions in Ontario. Public Water utilities in Peel, York, and Durham regions are the first to be changed into for-profit corporations.
Like the Greenbelt scandal, quite likely because they would be the most profitable for private corporations. Private water in the US costs 80 per cent more than public water systems. Private electricity market rates in the US are astronomical, causing much hardship there.
Both Ford’s “Protect Ontario” and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “Canada Strong” campaigns are prime examples of crisis capitalism, so brilliantly outlined in Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine, using the crisis created by Trump to bring in neoliberal policies.
Neoliberal policies like trickle down legislation of tax cuts, deregulation and privatization, that always promises prosperity but never deliver. The narrative of deregulation and eliminating regulations that protected the public interest and our health and the environment has evolved into the deliberately derogatory term “red tape.” Red tape is touted as bad and some kind of barrier to prosperity, restricting innovation and growth. Very importantly, Ford is also aggressively privatizing healthcare, deliberately underfunding it to create the crisis he needs to justify privatization.
Both Ford’s and Carney’s campaigns rely heavily on Public Private Partnerships (P3s) for financing. P3s are the most insidious form of privatization with a dismal record worldwide. P3s are where the public pays and the private profits, where all the benefits only flow up to the top one per cent. They should be called P11 Public relations and Publicity Ploys to Pretty up Profit and Pursue Policies of Peril to People on the Planet for all Posterity. Both Carney and Ford’s campaigns only create more profit-making opportunities for the wealthy and their corporations.
Implementing “Special Economic Zones” to further eliminate environmental laws, labor and health and safety regulations should be challenged in court. Of course, Ford would just use the notwithstanding clause to ram it through. By eliminating regulations, these “Special Economic Zones” also increase profits. Still, it should be challenged in court to make the public argument.
Ford is following the example set by his predecessor Mike Harris by dismantling democracy. The first bill that Harris passed was Bill 26 the Savings and Restructuring Act. A gigantic omnibus bill more than 200 pages eliminating dozens of existing laws, granting arbitrary new powers to cabinet ministers to rule by decree. Combined with Ford’s dismantling of democracy in every piece of his legislation, democracy in Ontario has been greatly weakened, to the benefit of the top one per cent.
Like all horror movies these horror shows have predictable endings.
Our reality is about to get even more unaffordable, and the wealthy much wealthier.
