After twenty years on the front lines of the movement to protect our public health care in Ontario, perhaps I should be more jaded.
But when I read the headlines today announcing the mulish determination of Kathleen Wynne and her government to sell off Hydro One despite all reason, despite overwhelming public opposition and the antimony of both the Conservatives and the NDP, despite expert assessments warning of higher costs, and regardless of the fact that it is privatization of the management of our electricity grid for goodness sake – I almost can’t believe it.
We should all be up in arms.
If Wynne is willing to give away public hydro what will she not privatize?
If I seem angry, that’s because Wynne ran an entire election campaign on investing in public services, not cutting them. She’s supposed to be better than this. She never once mentioned forcing through the largest privatization in Ontario’s history.
She has no mandate. None.
Not for this. And not for what she has been doing to the health care system.
So far, this government seems hell-bent on dismantling public hospitals too. No amount of evidence that the cuts have gone too far moves them. Not gridlocked hospitals with patients suffering the indignity of lying on stretchers for days in hallways. Not patients discharged at all hours of the day or night though they are practically at death’s door.
And while we’ve stymied the government’s attempt to cut wholesale all the surgeries, all outpatient clinics, and diagnostics from Ontario’s hospitals and contract them out to private clinics (thanks to the intervention of a fairly progressive Health Minister, I think) we still have a long way to go to stop it fully. Every week I hear of more private clinics doing hospital work. At the health coalition we are inundated daily with stories from patients who are compelled to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in unlawful user fees at these clinics.
But I digress.
This week, the Financial Accountability Officer for the Ontario Legislature warned in a report that the province will be in worse economic shape after the Hydro-One sell off.
He said that the money the province will get for the privatization scheme is nowhere near what they projected, and that it may well end up increasing the province’s debt, not reducing it. This, after recent weeks of news reports that the salary of Hydro One CEO has swelled to more than $1.3 million since the Wynne government’s privatization, and may go as high as $4 million per year.
Premier Wynne’s response? A determined, “It’s going…”
It may increase the provincial debt and we are all going to pay more for hydro, but she’s selling off Hydro One regardless.
It is the same damn-the-torpedoes attitude she showed in response to the Ontario Auditor General’s report that gave evidence that Ontario’s privatized P3 schemes – mostly privatized P3 hospitals – have cost Ontarians $8 billion more than if the infrastructure was funded publicly with proper management.
Ms. Wynne didn’t even bat an eye.
As we’re all told that we have to tighten our belts, the privatized P3s are forging full steam ahead. The investors (like the big banks and multinational finance firms, not incidentally – note below when you come to Ed Clark) are laughing all the way to the bank while we watch our local hospitals getting eviscerated.
For Hydro One, the government is claiming that they will take the proceeds and use them to build transportation infrastructure. The pretense is that Hydro One and Public Transportation Infrastructure are like a teeter totter. We have to cut funds from one to raise them for the other. There is, according to this framing of the issues, no other conceivable way to raise funds for transit and roads.
(What about an “Ontario Moves” public transportation bond-issue? Where are the optional tax proposals priced-out and compared to the apparent no-benefit highrisk sell-off of Hydro One?)
For Kathleen Wynne, apparently the expertise of the Legislature’s Financial Accountability Officer has nothing on TD Financial’s Ed Clark.
Clark, the so-called financial “guru” – a horrible misappropriation of that term – who came up with the sell-off scheme, is, not-soincidentally, the father of Bert Clark, the CEO of Infrastructure Ontario (the privatized P3 arm in the Ontario government).
Bert (son) will be in charge of the Hydro One sale. How cozy.
Ed Clark (father), like Don Drummond before him, and like all the boatloads of consultants and experts that they use to justify hospital cuts, is the front-man, in place to provide “expert” cover for the privatization plan.
And while we will all pay more for hydro, along with every local business and some big ones as well, Bay Street loves the hydro privatization scheme. Go figure.
Wynne’s message is clearly designed to end the debate…. It’s happening, no matter what we think.
But what if we refused to just let her get away with it? What if every single one of us called our local MPP over the weekend and told them, just one line: “Do everything in your power to stop the sell-off of Hydro One. I will be watching and I will vote on it come the next election.”?
What if we really did that? What if we all demanded a referendum? After all we are supposed to be the owners of Hydro One.
Maybe it would amount to nothing. But it will certainly help make sure that they don’t think they can get away with these things easily.
I, for one, cannot just sit back and watch this happen. If they can get away with privatizing Hydro One, I shudder to think what they’ll think they can do to our hospitals.
Natalie Mehra, Executive Director, Ontario Health Coalition
P.S. Here’s the list of MPPs: www.ontla.on.ca/ lao/en/getting-involved/contact-an-mpp. I’m calling mine right now. I hope you call yours.
Our Comment
A few months ago, Kathleen Wynne was quoted in the Toronto Star bemoaning the fact that the federal government had withdrawn from funding infrastructure the way it used to.
Article 18(j) of the Bank of Canada Act enables the central bank “to make loans to the Government of Canada or the government of any province.”
Article 14(2) states that, “If…there should emerge a difference of opinion between the Minister and the Bank concerning monetary policy to be followed, the Minister may…give the Governor a written…and the Bank shall comply with that directive.”
Between 1938, when our central bank was nationalized, and 1974, the government used that power to help fund physical infrastructure like the Trans Canada Highway and the St. Lawrence Seaway, and social infrastructure like old age pensions and universal Medicare (without creating undue price inflation, or federal debt!).
Alas, this policy was abandoned after Canada joined the Basel Committee of the Bank for International Settlements. Instead, the government has borrowed from private banks, generating a federal debt whose interest is now the government’s single largest budget expenditure – larger than health care, senior entitlements or national defence.
Fortunately, Ms. Wynne is on good terms with our new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Better she should seek a loan from the feds at near zero interest than sell the “family jewels.”
But then, the Liberals have been planning to establish a new infrastructure bank. Do they not know that they already have one? Or is that plan a sneaky end-run manoeuvre to operate a private bank rather than the public central bank we already own?
Élan
