By Jeff Leiper and Catherine McKenney
Ottawa has some of the best tap water in the world. It’s a point of pride for the employees who deliver it, and for city councillors who get to brag about it. Elected officials and other stakeholders worry, though, that Doug Ford’s government is on the path to privatizing water.
Ontarians need to speak out now, before new regulations are released, to ensure the public delivery of water. We need to ensure that it’s never sold for profit, and to ensure direct public accountability for its safety.
What residents need to know is that Queen’s Park recently passed the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act. It lets the province create utility companies to deliver city water and wastewater services. They have the power to force those onto municipalities. Peel Region is set to become the pilot project. No one yet knows the rules under which it will operate. There’s no guarantee these new utilities will be publicly-owned.
Regulations – not law – will determine who can own these new utility companies. They will be incorporated under the Business Corporations Act. Ford’s government calls these “public corporations” and is at pains to say their goal is not privatization. But there’s nothing in the law guaranteeing public ownership.
Almost as alarmingly, these new utilities will be required to report only to the Minister their rate plans. There’s no provision in the law for an independent, public regulator. Today, your city council is directly answerable to residents for water rates. That would change dramatically under the new law.
We don’t need to belabour the danger of privatizing water production and delivery. Higher rates and less public oversight of safety are two very real risks.
Ford’s government may swear that their intent is never to privatize water. There is absolutely a legitimate discussion about how water and wastewater infrastructure gets built and paid for in Ontario cities. But if it was the government’s intent that these new utilities be publicly-owned, they could have written that into the law.
They didn’t.
The regulations aren’t yet final. It’s important that residents let their MPP know that new water utility companies must be 100% publicly owned. Rates must be set transparently and with direct accountability to the public.
Write to your MPP. Get your family and friends to write to theirs. Demand that regulations governing water and wastewater utilities require 100% public ownership. More, demand that the law be changed so that’s never up to the whim of the Premier or his minister.