On Corporate Plundering

H/t makaycartoons.net

Having written previously on the breath-taking legalized theft of our groundwater made possible by an Ontario Liberal government that has yet to meet a corporate entity it doesn't love, I avidly follow public reaction to this outrage. Today's Star offers an excellent series of letters on the topic, two of which I reproduce below:

Re: Let's stop being suckered by water-bottling giants, Aug. 27

The long-standing practice of allowing our fresh water supplies to be drawn by huge private commercial multinational companies like Nestlé and bottled for profit is egregious. In the ultimate perverse and twisted irony of capitalism a free, publicly owned resource is privatized and then sold back to those who previously owned it.

For decades the Ontario government has allowed Nestlé and other private companies to draw Ontario’s fresh water from our aquifers at literally no charge so that it could be bottled and sold back to us at a massive profit in the form of bottled water, beer and soda pop. After an outcry at this practice by environmentalists many years ago, they then placed an insultingly low token fee on the water of $3.71 per 1 million litres and quietly allowed Nestle to continue taking an average of 3 million litres a day of our publicly owned finite resource for bottled water.

Recently, without fanfare the Ontario government renewed the agreement. This should have been a large front-page headline in the Star but was not even noted.

As Ontarians we should all be outraged that a large multinational private enterprise is given our water without charge and under secrecy by our own government in what amounts to nothing more than legalized corporate theft with the willing collusion of the province.

Ontarians gain absolutely nothing from these arrangements while losing our finite supply of fresh water; Nestlé gets everything.

What possible motivations or explanation could the government have for agreeing to such terms while they are struggling with a large cumulative debt and an ongoing deficit and cutting government funding for a variety of critical services? What obligation does the government feel to a faceless mega-corporation that is happily stealing our water for its own enrichment with the blessing of the government? This is corruption at the highest level. Would Nestle agree to the deal if the terms were reversed?

The Ontario government is willingly forgoing billions in water revenues that are desperately needed. Why would the government at the very least not bottle our own water and sell it on the open market to recoup full value for Ontarians for this precious resource while eliminating the middle-man? Water bottling is not a sophisticated, expensive or complex process.

This is yet another example of the corruption of free enterprise and the willing collusion of our own public officials in its practice much like the recent revelations about offshore tax havens. The Minister of the Environment should resign. These agreements should all be cancelled.

We are regularly treated to egregious examples of governments selling off public assets to the private sector in perpetuity at fire-sale prices. It happened with Highway 407, it is happening with Hydro and it has been going on for decades with our water. The private sector is licking its chops over the LCBO. Where will it end and when will we have and demand a government that is truly a steward of the shared resources we all own.

The sale of any public asset should be placed under the lens of critical public scrutiny. These public resources are not theirs to sell to the lowest bidder! There should be a public inquiry into the privatization of public assets. If this keeps up soon we will have water, water everywhere but not a drop that we own.

Robert Bahlieda, Newmarket

Martin Regg Cohn’s evaluation of Nestlé’s right to bottle large quantities of Ontario water at a cheap price, then to sell it back to us, reveals an insidious corporate profit-making ploy that has gone on for several years. It happens in the U.S., too.

I suppose that Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne believes that $3.75 per million liters of water is better than nothing, but she fails to note the effect on rural aquifers. Farmers depend totally on water they draw from their expensive wells, and resent bottling companies drawing down their valuable resource so city folk can sip from costly plastic bottles.

I hope that this report will persuade some Torontonians to revert to tap water, thereby reducing Nestlé’s profits and water draw. Meanwhile I suggest Mr. Cohn investigate the many government-instigated restrictions that cause farmers to wonder why we should keep working as farmers.

Charles Hooker, East Garafraxa

Pathetic Political Posturing

Yesterday, I posted about the outrageous pillaging of our groundwater made possible by a government that seems oblivious to anything but its corporate clientele. It is a sad situation which I and many others have known about for a long time; it is the same knowledge that Premier Wynne has long been in possession of, since it is the system of permits her government grants that makes this kind of aquatic depredation possible. Yet to hear her political posturing, it is almost as if it is a revelation to her:

There is a difference between taking water for agricultural or industrial use and taking it to sell bottled water, Premier Kathleen Wynne said Wednesday. Some of the conditions of the permits for bottled water use are outdated, she said.

"There's the issue of the quantity of water that's taken, there's the issue of the cost of that water," Wynne said.

Actually, that is not the issue for a lot of people, Ms. Wynne. The real issue, which you are studiously ignoring, is why your government issues such permits in the first place, given that it is yet another sop to your corporate friends and, as the saying goes, a licence to print money.

Environmental group Wellington Water Watchers is urging Ontario not to renew a permit for Nestle Waters in Aberfoyle, Ont., that expired on July 31. It's upset that the company has been allowed to keep extracting water from a local well in the midst of a severe drought in the province.

A water-taking permit remains in force if a renewal application is made at least 90 days before it expires.

Wynne continued with her pathetic political posturing:

"Thirty years ago, we wouldn't have envisioned an industry that took water and put it in plastic bottles so that people could carry it around," Wynne said.

"I mean, we didn't drink water from plastic bottles 30 years ago. We turned on the tap and the fact is our tap water in Ontario is among the best in the world."

If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the following news report that only underscores the political prostitution taking place at Queen's Park.

Pillaging The Public Purse: On Hydro One's Privatization

I have written in the past on my strong opposition to Kathleen Wynne's selloff of 60% of Hydro One. She has no mandate for this pillaging of the public purse, and no good reason for it except her politically and ideologically-driven obsession with balancing the budget before Ontario's next provincial election. She will not be getting my vote.

Recently, Linda McQuaig wrote a column that came out strongly against this sale, offering an historical perspective showing the public good that accrues from public ownership of such a utility.

In today's Star, readers offer their own insights on this issue, one that is likely a big contributing factor in the Liberals' current poor showing in the polls:

Re: The case against privatizing Hydro One, Opinion Aug. 4

What’s most disturbing about reading Linda McQuaig’s strong case against privatizing Hydro One is that it reveals clearly that Premier Wynne seems to be selling it for no worthwhile reason.

When 73 per cent of Ontarians disagree with the sale and she insists on it, then she is not serving the public will. Further, to trade off the long-term benefits of Hydro One for a short-lived infusion of cash for infrastructure is economically incomprehensible.

With this kind of foolish, arbitrary decision, which is symptomatic of the disconnect between the public will and its leadership, Wynne will certainly join the infamous ranks of other failed premiers of Ontario, such as Mike Harris and Dalton McGuinty, who also carried out their personal agenda while forsaking the common good of the electorate.

Pity the serious voters.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

Timing is everything. Currently, along with a several other Ontarians, I am particularly interested in the timing of the Ontario Liberals’ Climate Change Action Plan.

Last Nov. 15, the Ontario Liberals privatized Hydro One when they sold off 15 per cent of the former Crown Corporation. Sad but true.

In April, they sold off another 15 per cent. The following month, Ontario’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change let the world know that Ontario is moving away from natural-gas home heating. Some back-peddling followed. Shortly after that, the Liberals released their official Climate Change Action Plan.

It indicated their intention to move to a more electricity-based society. Once complete, Ontario is to have far more electric vehicles, electric charging hubs, electric home initiatives, etc.

In summary, the Liberals are moving Ontario to a more electricity-based society after privatizing our province’s transmission grid and largest local distribution company! That means Hydro One will now go on to make record profits and a huge amount of potential income is being stripped away from Ontarians.

But why? To balance the current Liberal budget and dangle some shiny gifts ahead of the 2018 election. All this at the expense of Ontarians.

The whole thing reeks of corruption. Just waiting for the smoking gun to be revealed. Timing is everything.

Joel Usher, Newcastle

Thanks to Linda McQuaig for detailing the long history of support in Ontario for a public monopoly on electricity — right up to today. The public instinct is right: it is best to keep this rare and valuable asset so that profits go back to our treasury, and to avoid the risk of the monopoly control falling into the hands of those who would maximize their returns at the expense of consumers and the environment.

Ms. McQuaig could have added that selling off Hydro One is a bad deal, as concluded by Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer. After all, investors are not stupid.

They will not pay full price for the value of the future Hydro One profits they would get as minority shareholders, due to the risk, because key decisions affecting profits are taken by government. The monopoly is worth more to the government as the decision-maker.

If you must sell an asset, this is a particularly bad one to sell.

Kim Jarvi, Toronto

Connecting The Dots?

Here in Ontario, Premier Kathleen Wynne's decision to sell off 60% of Hydro One, the very profitable public utility that generated a pre-tax income of $803 million in 2013, is causing quite a storm of outrage. Despite her promise to put all profits from the sale toward transportation structure, the fact that the sale will yield a mere $4 billion after taxpayer money pays off Hydro's long-standing debt means the sale makes almost no sense. And, one might ask, why a sale of 60%, a proportion that will put hydro squarely in private sector's control?

Operation Maple has put up an interesting video that comes to some intriguing, although rather conspiratorial, conclusions. But surely such is preferable to the bovine passivity that government counts on when imposing its will on its citizens, isn't it?



Meanwhile, Toronto Star letter-writers do their usual excellent job in the critical-thinking department. Here are but a few examples:

Sell-off will help Ontario, Hydro One, Letter June 2

The government surely disagrees with Keith Summer’s excellent May 2 opinion piece, but Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli’s letter fails to say why. Instead of numerical analysis, all we get is the usual political bafflegab. Boiled down, the minister asks us to trust them. Well, count me out.

Apparently, a valuation of Hydro One has been worked out. I assume this valuation is a report of some kind, with validated numerical analysis. Has it been made public? If not public, has it been made available for scrutiny by reputable independent reviewers? Ontarians deserve this. When there is such a major policy change about the ownership of this vital utility, we all should demand a full revelation of the method and results of the valuation process.

The non-sequiturs in Mr. Chiarelli’s letters confound and astound me. He speaks of a 10 per cent maximum ownership causing shares to be broadly held across Ontario in the same sentence. How does that work? How does any aspect of the sale enable Hydro One to become more innovative, competitive and effective as he claims? It’s just silly to make such claims without any proof or rationale.

This deal is bad policy and Mr. Chiarelli should be admonished for writing such a trivial letter.

Edward Kilner, Mississauga

Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli repeated the term “much needed infrastructure” four times in his letter to the Star.

Ending his letter he left the impression that selling off 60 per cent of Hydro One “will create more than 110,000 jobs each year and help grow our economy,” without costing the taxpayers any money. But selling off part of Hydro One is not going to create one new job. These jobs for the “much needed infrastructure” are already there and have been sitting on the sidelines for years.

To suggest it will not cost the taxpayers any money reminds of the story of the investor who wanted to open a mink farm. He reasoned since mice multiplied five times faster than mink he could feed the mice to the mink and the mink carcasses to the mice and get the pelts for nothing. It sounded good on paper but as time went on he had to go to the well for more money.

Frank Feeley, Fonthill

After reading Keith M. Summers’ commentary I am more than ever convinced that the Ontario government should retain 100 per cent ownership of Hydro One, with all its healthy profits going into the public coffers rather than private pockets. But if it is in fact impossible for the government to borrow $9 billion at a reasonable rate then it should at least follow Mr. Summers’ advice and focus on raising $9 billion by offering approximately 30 per cent equity in Hydro One, retaining majority ownership and a much healthier percentage of the profits.

Gillian Marwick, Toronto

Say It Isn't So!

It seems that the refusal of a petulant prime minister to meet with the premier of Canada's largest province is having some unfortunate consequences:



H/t The Toronto Star

UPDATED: More On The Minimum Wage

There has been very much a predictable reaction from business to the Wynne government's decision to raise the Ontario minimum wage to $11 per hour as of June 1. Even though this modest increase will do little to lift the working poor out of poverty, the commercial sector is running about shouting that the sky will fall, prognosticating a loss of jobs as they take up a defensive position against something that will, they claim, eat away at their profits.

The following video from City TV offers a smattering of a debate over the issue; unfortunately, I no longer seem able to play video from the CBC, where much more detailed discussion has taken place, so this will have to do. Following the video, I turn to Joe Fiorito's latest observations about working poverty as his column today returns to the story of Doreen, whom I discussed yesterday.

As noted previously, Joe Fiorito has pointed out what a hardscrabble existence Doreen, a personal care worker, leads. Today, he adds to that portrait:

She said, “I broke my glasses last July. I can see, but fine stuff I can’t read.” You guessed right. She has not replaced her glasses. This is the kind of poverty that hurts deep in the bone, dulls the senses, and strangles hope. She has not stopped trying.

Compounding Doreen's problems are the expenses involved in keeping her qualifications current; she recently received a letter from one of the agencies for whom she is on an on-call list:

The letter advised Doreen that, if she wanted to stay active on the agency’s list and be eligible for work in the future, then she had to renew her first aid and CPR certificates.

Trouble is, the course preferred by that agency costs $115 and is only offered on weekends. Doreen works on the weekend for an elderly couple. What this means is that, in order to take the course and renew her certificate, she would have to cough up a day’s pay out of pocket to attend, and she would have to miss two days’ work on top of that.

There are more details about Doreen's travails in Firotio's piece, but I think you get the picture.

As I suggested yesterday, unless and until we are willing to put a human face on the working poor, their plight will never be addressed with any real justice.

UPDATE: Andrew Coyne and business representatives have recently suggested that minimum wage increases are a blunt instrument with which to attack poverty, and that a guaranteed income might be preferable. The cynic in me suggests this could be yet another way that business wants government to subsidize their operations; should they ever express a willingness to give up some of the generous corporate tax cuts that have come their way over the past several years as a show of good faith, perhaps then I will take them seriously.

Putting A Face On Minimum-Wage Poverty

Last evening I watched a fascinating documentary on PBS' Nature* about the black crested macaque, a monkey that is endemic to rainforests in Indonesia, which includes the island of Sulawesi. The monkeys are a badly endangered species whose numbers have dropped 90% over the last 25 years thanks to hunters who sell them as bush meat in local markets, this despite the fact that such hunting and sales are illegal. The film showed the almost human side of the monkeys, with their elaborate social interactions and hierarchies.

Wildlife cameraman and biologist Colin Stafford-Johnson, who first recorded them 25 years ago, had a purpose beyond merely acquainting viewers with these riveting creatures. Working with area groups and biologists, the plan was to show local populations the film in the hope that they would see the monkeys as fully-alive beings not so different from themselves, thereby engendering an empathy that might deter them from eating them. Early results suggest some success with this strategy.

Being able to relate to issues, problems and plights on a human and humane level, being able to see beyond arid statistics, is, in my view, essential if, as a society and species, we are ever to confront and solve some of our most pressing issues. It was in this spirit that I appreciated a recent piece by The Star's Joe Fiorito entitled Life on minimum wage is not a decent living.

Certainly we know the statistics: one in eight foodbank users in Canada are the working poor; 500,000 Ontarians, one out of nine, work at minimum wage jobs. But what is the human face of such poverty?

Looking through the eyes and experience of Doreen, a personal care worker, Fiorito offers that human face:

She is single. She is in her fifties. She has a bum knee and a bad back. She also has some trouble with her vision; a brain tumour, benign, she isn’t worried.

She lives in a rent-geared-to-income apartment in midtown Toronto. While we talked, she was waiting for her church to deliver a grocery voucher so she could afford to buy some groceries. Why?

Because Doreen can’t always afford to feed herself on the money she makes for the hours she gets.

But wait, there's more!

Dorren is an on-call worker, and if she is lucky, she will work nine-hour days, four days per week, thereby clearing a mere $1,240 per month.

Her rent is subsidized; she pays $592 a month, which leaves her with $648. A Metropass costs her $133. Her phone costs close to $20. She buys phone cards to talk to her mother, who lives in another country. Her cable and Internet cost $68 a month.

She also owes $900 on her credit card; yes, she sometimes uses her credit card for food.

She also takes certain medications which are not covered by the provincial health plan. “I had a knee replacement. My back is out. I still have to work. Sometimes I go without pain medication because I can’t afford it.” I repeat: She sometimes goes without her pain medication because she can’t always afford it.

Not a very pretty picture, is it? And not one that will in any measurable way be improved by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's decision to raise the minimum wage by 75 cents on June 1. The grinding face of working poverty continues to confront us and, thanks to a lack of political will, confound us.



* If you want to view the PBS show on the macaques, you will need a VPN such as Hola, free software that will mask your I.P. address so that it looks like you are an American viewer. (The PBS show is not licensed for viewing in Canada.)

Crumbs From The Table

Poverty in perpetuity. That is what Ontario's 'socially-progressive' Premier, Kathleen Wynne, has condemned the working poor to.

After waiting more than six months for what turned out to be a very timid report from a provincial minimum wage advisory panel that ended up recommending increases tied to inflation, the premier has announced the new wage will be $11 per hour, with future increases tied to the inflation rate.

With one out of nine currently earning the minimum, this is hardly cause for celebration. Yielding, as usual, to the 'concerns' of business, Wynne had this to say:

“I know that there’s a call for $14 (but) we have to move very carefully, because this is about making sure that we retain and create jobs.”

“At the same time, we need to have a system in place that has a fairness to it, that I think has not been the case for many years.”

While few would argue that an immediate jump to the much-requested figure of $14 per hour would be too much for many small businesses to bear, the truly discouraging fact is that the premier makes no mention of further increases other than those tied to inflation. If $14 per hour would have put those working 35-40 hours per week just 10% above the poverty rate, one needn't use a calculator to know that the working poor will continue to be mired in poverty.

Today's Star editorial makes the following observation and suggestion:

Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government can do better. It should, at the very least, follow the Ontario Liberals’ earlier trend of raising the minimum wage 2.5 times faster than the rate of inflation. As part of its “war on poverty” the previous Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty raised the provincial minimum wage by 50 per cent between 2004 when it was $6.85 an hour and 2010 when it topped out at $10.25 – a period when prices rose just 17.5 per cent.

If the same formula was followed now, it would mean an immediate jump in the minimum wage to about $11.65 an hour.

Hardly the stuff of revolutionary thinking, perhaps, but at the very least, a start on the road to economic justice.

More Thoughts On The Minimum Wage

Although I have written several previous posts on the need to substantially increase the minimum wage so that it becomes a living wage, I have been planning an update. However, I doubt that today will be the day for that update since, once again over my morning coffee, I have come across two thoughtful letters in The Star that I feel compelled to share with you.

Although the first letter looks at the poverty pervasive in Toronto thanks in no small measure to the current Ontario hourly minimum of $10.25, the second looks at the broader provincial consequences of such paltry remuneration. I am sure that similar conditions prevail in the rest of Canada.

And, as letter-writer McAdam asks, Where is the report by Ontario’s Minimum Wage Advisory Panel? My suspicion is that Premier Wynne, with a spring election likely, will be sitting on it for a long, long time unless she is that rare, almost extinct breed of politician capable of real leadership.

Re: Time to give poorest a raise, Editorial Jan. 16

There are lots of social and public policy ideas that we can afford to take our time and have a full and long debate about before moving ahead towards a solution, but raising the minimum wage should be a no-brainer. Those who oppose raising the minimum wage to a living wage, like Tim Hudak or the Fraser Institute, obviously have neither the head nor the heart to reach this sane conclusion.

You simply cannot afford to live and eat in Toronto on a minimum wage salary, and those who are trying to do so are getting sick because of it. That’s the information provided by the brave doctors and other medical professionals who are finally speaking the truth about the impact of a society that pays its CEO millions of dollars a year while thousands of our citizens are working hard every day just trying to survive. This is income inequality in its rawest and most brutal form and anyone who condones this situation is complicit in allowing it to continue.

This is one issue that we can begin to fix today by raising the minimum wage. It will not take people completely out of danger, but it will be a sign that we still recognize and reward hard work in our society. And it will be a step in the right direction.

We will need to do much more, like taxation reform to make our system fairer, increased support for seniors, and much more investment in training and development of our young people. We can take some time and talk about those long-term solutions. But raising the minimum wage is urgent.

Katie Arnup, Toronto

The Star points out a few of the huge costs from Ontario’s poverty-level minimum wage, including damage to one’s health, as doctors and other health care providers have noted, besides the hardship and frustration of poverty. But there are many other harmful impacts.

Some 375,000 Ontarians must rely on foodbank handouts to ward off hunger. Recent studies show that about 11 per cent of food bank users in Ontario are employed, but must turn to foodbanks because of their low earnings. Imagine the thousands of volunteer hours devoted to survival programs such as these.
And what about the frustrations for families in which parents must work two minimum-wage jobs in order to make ends meet, and who thus have little time to spend with their children?

My wife teaches many low-income students in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park neighbourhood where this situation is all too common. She sees the emotional price that her students pay when their parents are missing in action, because of overwork and fatigue.
The Star rightly asks: where is the report by Ontario’s Minimum Wage Advisory Panel? When I presented to the panel last fall, a staffperson told me that its report was expected by December. Where is it?

What kind of society tolerates a situation in which hard-working people must still endure poverty? The plight of low-wage workers is a vital issue that should figure prominently in Ontario’s public life, especially as a provincial election approaches.

Anglican Church members across the GTA and surrounding region are currently debating a proposal to raise the minimum wage in two stages to $14.50 per hour by 2015, above the poverty line. If we all raise our voices, we can improve the lives of our society’s poorest paid workers.

Murray MacAdam, Social Justice & Advocacy Consultant, Anglican Diocese of Toronto