Privatization of Public Infrastructure
Canada Infrastructure Bank and Pay-the Rich-Schemes
  
The Trudeau government insists all loans from the Canada
Infrastructure Bank (CIB) for public works and services must include an
agreement to hand over local control and future revenue to a
public-private-partnership (P3). This demand for privatization is yet
another scheme to pay the rich. For the global monopolies and cartels,
P3s are a
guaranteed source of risk-free profit and a path towards greater
control of the economy.
The CIB has $35 billion in
public money available for infrastructure development and maintenance,
which municipalities, Quebec, the provinces and territories badly need.
The Trudeau dictate to "partner" with powerful private interests if
local governments want a CIB loan is a wedge into privatization of
existing and future public works with
the attendant loss of public revenue and control.
Privatized
public works mean in practice that private interests expropriate as
profit a portion of the new value public sector workers create. This
expropriated added-value is lost to the public sector along with
control. With P3s both social wealth and control over the economy
become further concentrated in the hands of a few global
oligarchs.
Public
enterprise, including
infrastructure, should be a major source of revenue for governments. By
adopting neo-liberalism, privatization becomes paramount
and governments seek revenue elsewhere, usually from regressive
taxation of individuals and user fees, and engage in cutbacks of social
programs and public services.
The crime involved is that public authorities of
a modern economy in a country as large as Canada do not need private
funding for planned public projects. They can raise money from public
banks and treasury based solely on the prospect of a return of those
borrowed funds from the future value workers produce at the planned
developments.
Trudeau Pressure to Privatize Mapleton Infrastructure
Some municipalities, even though eager for investment funds
for public infrastructure, are reluctant to directly "partner with
private business" within P3s despite the Trudeau government's
insistence. Numerous studies have shown P3s result in a burden on
public finances and a loss of local control.
Like
many municipalities, the township of Mapleton, Ontario is in dire need
to upgrade its water and wastewater systems. The CIB, derisively called
the Bank of Privatization, offered a $20-million debt-financing package
but insisted on a P3 taking control of the waterworks. Even before the
deal was finalized, the Trudeau government began
promoting the Mapleton infrastructure "pilot project" of a CIB loan and
P3 as the new model for all other municipalities to follow. The package
was structured to ensure the P3 private "partner" could expropriate a
certain profit from the municipality's sale of water and gain control
over management. This would leave the local public waterworks
with a yearly loss of income and with less control to make changes.
After studying the CIB loan and P3 offer, Mapleton Township announced
that raising money on their own, presumably through a municipal bond,
would be less onerous and the municipality's public service would
retain control. It cancelled the CIB P3 deal but not without being
presented a $367,000 legal bill in connection with the process and no
offer of assistance from the federal government.
Municipalities
had been hoping the CIB would provide relief from the traditional
method of funding infrastructure investment through municipal bonds
arranged with private moneylenders. However, the Trudeau government
stipulation of introducing a P3 along with the CIB loan in effect means
jumping into bed with the same devil but in
different garb.
Municipal bonds held by private
global moneylenders have been sucking the blood out of municipalities
for decades. Even facing this fate, some municipalities such as
Mapleton find it better to deal with the devil they know than the P3
parasites. At least they retain some semblance of local control and the
eventual loss of revenue through
interest payments has proven through studies to be less onerous than
with P3s.
This
begs the question why a federal public institution, the CIB, would
demand another public institution, a municipality, involve global
private partners when the entire deal could be consummated without
incurring debt to private lenders and with no loss of local control and
future revenue. Why would the CIB not
offer municipalities
interest free loans where only administration costs are charged and
future repayment of the principal when the new or rebuilt
infrastructure begins producing value?
 Of course
for this to work without loss to the federal government, it would have
to stop borrowing from private moneylenders itself and begin the modern
government practice of lending money to itself with repayment or
replenishing of coffers guaranteed from produced value as the economy
develops. But such a sensible new direction would
violate the neo-liberal demand that all economic projects whether
public or private must serve the private interests of the global
oligarchy and concentrate social wealth and power in fewer hands.
What the Trudeau liberals and CIB call their "innovative
financing model" is yet another pay-the-rich scheme to turn public
funds and projects over to powerful private interests. Even the $35
billion given to the CIB as a start-up fund is suspect as it comes from
the government's general revenue, which is being replenished with
unprecedented
borrowing from global moneylenders.
With all this
government borrowing from private interests and the proliferation of
P3s, public funds for social programs and infrastructure and any
subsequent public revenue disappear into the pockets of the rich. The
deficits and national debt escalate and the experts and media pundits
scream themselves hoarse yelling for cuts to social
programs, more and higher user fees for public services and greater
individual taxation.
Local control over public
infrastructure created after years of nation-building is being lost to
nation-wrecking as the global oligarchs invade every cell of the
economy and suck out more and more value to fatten their pockets. This
leaves the local public authorities and the people with less money for
public works and social programs, and less
control over their lives, deepening a hole that is being dug for them.
Trudeau's Campaign Promise Evaporates
During the 2015 federal election, the Trudeau
Liberal Party
campaigned on a promise that the CIB would assist municipalities to
build and maintain their needed infrastructure. Never once during the
campaign did Trudeau say that CIB loans would come with a P3 obligation
to hand over control and money to global private interests. After
becoming the party in power, Trudeau brought in Larry Fink, a leading
oligarch from the BlackRock investment cartel, and other oligarchs who
pushed and organized to open up municipalities and other parts of the
economy to global investors. They insisted and the Trudeau government
agreed that a P3 demand must be included with any CIB loan.
These demands and nation-wrecking practices run counter to
nation-building and the right of the people to control the economy and
all affairs that affect their lives.
 The CIB was an
opportunity for something new, a public financing agency without a
direct connection to private moneylenders and their bloodsucking
interest payments through federal government borrowing and municipal
bonds. Such a new direction would entail public works financed through
government loans without the involvement of
private cartels as moneylenders or P3s. Control and profit from
realized infrastructure would stay in the communities and result in
greater revenue for the municipalities and lower user fees for the
people. Such a new direction was not to be and in fact the government
is making the situation worse.
The voices for a new
direction for the economy and nation-building are growing louder and
louder. Whose economy? The people's economy! Who decides? The people
decide! Who controls? The people control! Join the discussion and
movement for a new direction for the economy.
This article was published in
March 19, 2021 - No.
19
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08191.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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