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October 2, 2012 - No. 123 Monopoly Right No! Public Right Yes! Necessity to Exercise Control Over Exploitation of Natural Resources  Monopoly
Right
No!
Public Right Yes! Monopoly Right No! Public Right Yes! The Canadian P3 "Model"For several years, Canadians have been opposing what is called the P3 Model -- the so-called public-private partnerships which are said to be the most efficient and cost-effective way to engage in all aspects of delivery of public services in today's world. This "model" has proven to be a major scheme to pay the rich by turning over the state's treasury and decision-making authority to private interests, and destroying the public delivery of social programs. P3s have become one of the Harper government's pet projects promoted by none other than the Governor General appointed by Harper, David Johnston.
The P3 model promoted by Johnston in London is a feature of the end of the social contract that was part of the 20th century social welfare state. This included a Canadian standard of living and certain social programs such as a national health system, unemployment insurance, public education, pensions, public responsibility for infrastructure, etc. Far from an "innovation" in the sense of renewing, modernizing or improving what exists, the Canadian P3 model is the anti-social contribution of the Canadian government to the international financial oligarchy. It is the method the Government of Canada has found to impose the rule of the monopolies over governments everywhere. Besides signalling the end of the post-war social contract, it also reveals the profound crisis of governance taking place in Canada and internationally as well. The P3 model wrecks the sovereign decision-making power of governments at all levels and makes them subservient to private interests. As such, above all else, the P3 model reveals the profound crisis of governance in which the Harper government and provincial governments have plunged Canada by abdicating their duty to uphold the public good. What better place for Johnston's sophistry than London, the home of the Thatcher government which notoriously justified its anti-social offensive with the claim that "there is no such thing as society." The Thatcher government launched its Public Finance Initiatives in the '80s as a means of satisfying the claims of the financial oligarchy to everything public as a source of profit. What previously had been considered the responsibility of government as an expression of the collective will to meet the basic needs of the citizens for health care, education, care of the most vulnerable and the public pension funds, was put at the disposal of the financial oligarchy, both as funds to speculate on the stock market and as other schemes to pay the rich by guaranteeing the profits of private monopolies. The term public-private partnership had previously meant, in the evolution of health care in particular, those institutions funded and regulated by government but built and operated by churches, charitable institutions and other non-profits. The "modern-day" public-private partnership that the Governor General shamelessly promotes as the "Canadian Model" is a full-blown model of how to destroy sovereign public institutions to make sure the interests of the most powerful monopolies and their oligopolies trump all other interests. He does this in the name of the highest ideals, saying that he, in sharing this "Canadian model" with the world, and the state and the monopolies it serves, are engaged in something he calls the "diplomacy of knowledge" which is, he says "our ability and willingness to work together and share the information we uncover and refine -- across disciplines and borders -- to create a smarter, more caring world." He says that governments play an important role in promoting innovation, "by ensuring that all citizens have access to quality schools; by creating solid organizations that encourage people to work together and share; and by nurturing a national economic climate that rewards people for producing innovative methods, products and practices." Innovation, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as "bring in novelties, make new, make changes in, alter" Johnston explains in a self-serving manner, as "changing something that is already established; it is taking an existing idea or concept and approaching it from a different perspective, or combing it with a seemingly unrelated idea or concept to improve it or create something wholly, radically new."
He claims that the second and most "innovative" feature of the Canadian P3 model is that "The model takes the entire lifecycle of projects into consideration -- from design, to construction, operation and maintenance -- providing governments with a complete picture of project costs and risks. It also enables public-sector organizations to focus on their core business -- defining their desired outputs -- making private-sector partners responsible for coming up with the most sensible solution to produce those outputs." The Canadian P3 experience is one of governments imposing thinly veiled privatization. This is not a mere divestment of responsibility for social programs to the "private sector" which is also taking place, particularly in education and seniors' care, but a broad politicization of private monopoly interests. The P3 infrastructure projects including hospitals, bridges, municipal services in particular, don't end up in the hands of some local entrepreneur. They end up under the control of multinationals based in the UK, Europe, Australia or elsewhere which form consortia to take on specific projects or a series of projects. Where originally what was most lucrative was the financing, design and construction of a project like a hospital, the "innovation" presented by the "Canadian model" is that the consortia now take on a 30-year project in which their profits are guaranteed by a contract which commits governments to hand over vast amounts of public funds in an arrangement which gives little or no control to the government or the public.
Vancouver Island Town Halls Launch
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During the 2012 Summer
Olympic Games in London, Johnston
held
several meetings with representatives of governments of other countries
to promote this "Canadian Model." On July 28, a breakfast meeting was
held at the official residence of Canada's High Commissioner to London,
the disgraced former Premier
of British Columbia Gordon Campbell. The title of the Governor
General's speech to the meeting, which was attended by "senior
representatives of countries attending the Olympic Games," was
"Public-Private Partnerships -- the Canadian Model."
There are two things about
the Canadian P3
model that Johnston puts forward for the world to emulate. The first
follows his self-serving definition of innovation and assertion that
governments cannot act alone: "The Canadian model works because
private-sector experts from a variety of
sectors are actively and heavily involved throughout project
development. It postulates that private-sector capital is at risk and
therefore harnesses the incentives and discipline of capital markets,"
Johnston said.
At Town Hall meetings in Campbell River on
September 26
and in
Courtenay on September 27 more than 200 people came out to learn about
the plans to build new hospitals in these Vancouver Island communities
as public-private partnerships (P3s). Since the Premier announced on
April 26 that the provincial
government had approved the plan to replace the two existing hospitals
in both communities with new hospitals, there has been a deafening
silence about what exactly that plan is.
Short-term benefits relate
to the construction phase, which is estimated to involve about 1,850
construction jobs. Enbridge contends that all steel pipe used would be
manufactured in Canada. The potential supplier would be the Evraz
mini-mill in Regina, Saskatchewan,
which produces large diameter pipe from recycled scrap steel using an
electric arc furnace. The Regina mill is the former Interprovincial
Steel Company (IPSCO), controlled since 2008 by Evraz. Evraz is a
global steel monopoly based in Russia and one of the largest vertically
integrated steel and mining corporations
in the world employing 110,000 workers.
Enbridge and their political
and other sponsors declare that the
Canadian economy faces the necessity for the oil monopolies to increase
their profits so they will "reinvest in Canada" and dig up and drill
even more bitumen. They refuse to address a very real problem that
shipping raw resources and specifically
bitumen out of the country necessarily leads to the destruction of
actual and potential manufacturing. The one precludes the other. Once
workers have built the pipeline and facilities to export bitumen, why
would investors want to divert the crude into manufacturing facilities
near where it is mined? They want as
much bitumen flowing through "their" pipeline as possible. The Enbridge
experts made it clear that the company and global investors have no
plans to upgrade and refine the bitumen in Canada unless they are given
large subsidies and handouts by the state to do so.
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Upcoming Meetings on Adding Value to Raw Logs, Crude
Oil and
Other Natural Resources
The Stand Up for the North Committee is organizing meetings to highlight the need to refine crude oil and process raw logs and other natural resources in Canada so as to create more jobs and add longer value chains to the provincial and national economy in an environmentally responsible way. A second set of meetings will focus on presentations from workers and unions in the oil sands, forestry and other sectors who are concerned about the increasing export of raw materials and who want more processing carried out within Canada.
Sponsored/endorsed by: CUPE BC, PPWC Local 9, Steelworkers Local 1-424, Faculty Association of CNC, Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, North Labour Law Corporation, Citizens' Environmental Advocacy Group, Sea to Sands Conservation Alliance (and other organizations TBA).
For further information, phone: (250) 562-0015 or email: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
Scientists' Fight to Defend Life Work and
Contribute to Society and Public Good
Coalition to Save the Experimental Lakes Area Organizes Tribute in Winnipeg
On Sunday, September 16, a tribute to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) organized by the Coalition to Save ELA was held at the Forks in Winnipeg. Besides Save ELA signs, informative presentations about what goes on at ELA held the interest of those who came by. People could view water insects through a microscope, see a selection of critters from freshwater lakes, hear scientists describing their research and listen to folk music.
ELA is a freshwater research site unique in the world. It is a giant outdoor laboratory, including 58 pristine lakes and 19 buildings, allowing researchers to understand interactions in whole ecosystems. Whole lakes are manipulated while others act as controls for comparisons. It was set up in 1968; 44 years of continuous research and monitoring of lakes will be wiped out when the Harper government closes it on March 31, 2013 as part its attack on the public service and institutions that uphold the public interest. Closing it is a huge loss not just to Canada but to aquatic science and the development of the human factor/social consciousness in prevention and remediation of the pollution of fresh water. All areas of ELA must be returned to their pristine state if and when it is closed; the costs of that will far outweigh the trivial "savings" of $2 million federal annually. This alone points to the fact that the closure of the ELA is not about "saving money" but destruction of everything which stands in the way of the reckless drive to exploit Canada's resources without regard for the public good.
Diane Orihel, a scientist and organizer of
the
Coalition to Save ELA, paid tribute to ELA for putting
Canada in the forefront of aquatic science in the world. She spoke of
its work to serve Canadians, to conduct science in the public interest,
to
guide public policy, and to provide stewardship for the ecosystem.
Fundamental
research done at ELA can and has been applied to lakes worldwide, she
explained, adding that this has been essential for the health of our
lakes and our water. "We must be good
stewards of water; without ELA science we will not know how," she said
and called on people who care about ELA to fight to keep it alive.
Ian Davies, a scientist who has worked 44 years at ELA, pointed out that limnology, the study in-land waters, is a new field and that ELA has been there for half of its lifetime. In 1928 the first studies began in Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan. In 1956 the first books on ecology and limnology were published; by 1966 Lake Erie was eutrophic, i.e., full of algal blooms which when they decay deplete the water of oxygen needed by fish and other organisms. Lake Erie has since recovered, due to the ELA studies. The freshwater scientists at University of Manitoba wondered how to sort the situation in Lake Erie out and needed pristine, small lakes provided by ELA: "They tell us what is going on. One thousand or so publications [on the work done with these lakes] have told us much," he stated.
Young scientists involved with research at ELA gave brief reports on significant studies such as:
- "Why Aren't Fish Having Babies?" This study investigates remnants from hormone replacement therapy in urban sewage moving into water systems.
- "Do Fish Farms Harm the Environment?" These
experiments are unfinished.
- "What Is the Toxicity of Nanosilver in the Environment?" This is urgently needed work that will not be completed, presently conducted by Trent University and University of Manitoba.
- "Remember Acid Rain?" Small lab studies denied acidification from coal-fired power plants but the whole-lake ELA experiments proved it. Sulfur dioxide emissions were stopped.
- "Reservoirs and Greenhouse Gases and Why Flooding of Peatlands Should Be Avoided"
- "What Causes Algae?" ELA scientists discovered that nitrogen is not the culprit, only phosphorus, and so millions of dollars formerly spent to treat nitrogen in large municipal sewage treatment is saved. Removing phosphorus is cheaper and is still done.
Retired scientists elaborated on why ELA must be saved. One explained the complex method used in the 1990s to figure out where mercury in fish was coming from, as there are three delivery systems and some of the mercury comes from pollution while some is from natural processes.
The unique long-term data set established by monitoring of pristine lakes is a treasure second to none in the world. It started about 1959 near a weather station; there are now 44 years of high quality data, with frequency of measurement, completeness of data, seasonal measuring, covering a range of lakes. It is collected by the same scientists or ones they trained, using the same methodology. with cross linkages. There is nothing like it anywhere else. Researchers request access to this long-term data set world-wide and come to ELA to "look forward by looking backward." It costs next to nothing to maintain, but is at risk of being lost.
A speaker from the Lake Winnipeg Foundation spoke of the ironic, irrational and unacceptable dismantling of ELA at a time when to discover what is polluting Lake Winnipeg is a crucial matter. She also pointed out that a whole list of new chemicals from emerging technologies can only be studied in small lakes. Nanosilver is an example. Winnipeg is enlivened by the experts, students, companies and money all drawn by ELA. She paid tribute to the scientist's work to preserve and protect our lakes for future generations.
Jon Gerrard, MLA for River Heights and the Leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party, stated that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a substitute for ELA, its "natural capital and knowledge base.... [We] must find a way, there must be a way to save ELA, save us and save the planet."
Nikki Ashton, NDP MP for Churchill, referred to "real Canadian values" such as a clean environment, respect for science and the rights of indigenous peoples, which are at risk under the current political climate where evidence-based knowledge and science is devalued. Her message to the Harper government was: "Save ELA; if you don't we will."
All out to support the scientists' fight to defend
their life work which has made an important contribution to society and
the public good!
On September 27, petitions to save Canada’s world renowned Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) signed by more than 23,000 Canadians were delivered to Members of Parliament on the steps of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. (SaveELA.org)
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