Letters
Response to the Water for Profit series
Posted February 13, 2003

Send your thoughts

The main problem for me is that private corporations' primary obligation are to their shareholders and not the public. They are also protected by privacy legislation from disclosing information about their activities other than those relating to investment and shareholder interests.

That does not serve me as a citizen nor the community at large. And we all know that the shareholder is best served with increasing profits with advancing time. That does not serve the public interest.

With those obligations on the corporations, there is no incentive to conserve water, maintain infrastructure with high quality materials and services, nor to serve the community where the utility is located.

Today those corporations are in France, Germany and the United States. They do not have a stake in my local community. We have seen the results of foreign ownership in forestry and mining. They do not make long term commitments. When the resource is gone they are gone. The corporations take their higher paying jobs back to their home country and leave behind gaping holes – socially and in the physical plane of our environment.

Thank-you for your series. Keep up the great work. I am glad that investigative journalism is still alive somewhere. It is certainly not alive in newsprint in Canada or the United States. Other than Greg Palast, no one dares rock the boat.

Olga Schwartzkopf
Vancouver, B.C.

Sounds similar to Klein selling out to the U.S. rather than promoting government development of our oil resources. Soon we'll have people freezing in their homes in Alberta while corporations profit from our oil.

Greg P. Hayes
Ft. McMurray, Alta.

The water of the world belongs to all. In North America we have an abundance of water in many areas. We waste far too much. We pay for the cost of pumping, piping, reservoirs, etc. but the water is free. In North America if you are poor, there is still water from public sources, etc.

Allowing the WTO to treat water as a commodity is an outrage. It is as insane as allowing intellectual property rights on seeds. It is an abomination. Private companies have no business in water distribution in the poor. We are giving up control of our priceless resources to the private sector and we know the primary goal of private companies is to make money.

Seeds, water, food, security are fundamental rights. Private companies hold people hostage by controlling seeds and water. We must keep the water for the people. The poor have to be protected. Their water needs to be free.

I have a couple of friends in Chiapas, Mexico. If there water is privatized they will not be able to purchase it. They live like so many others live – on what they can produce on a poor patch of land. There are no roads, no electricity, no government services at all, schools are run by the locals and the area is receiving help through DESMI and from CCOPD (Development & Peace).

Charging from water means the area's inhabitants would be without water. The idiocy of allowing seeds to be intellectual property is also as devastating to the poor 1.4 billion or so who live on the land.

God help us for our falling into the trap of greed, allowing world trade, allowing rich large multi-nationals to control food and water. We are so caught up in consumerism and applying them to all peoples of the Earth. To me it is criminal to allow such things. We must, as people who have influence, demand our government stand up for the poor at WTO talks.

James Wigglesworth

Letters
Posted February 12, 2003

"You're clients are captive because they can't decide, 'Well, I'm not going to buy water anymore, I'm not going to turn my tap on,'" he says. "You can't do that. You can switch from Coke to Pepsi but you can't switch from water to... what?"

Oh come on, it's no different from gas, telephone, electricity. There are choices.

You need to get past thinking that profit is bad.

Frank Curry

The City of Kamloops recently considered the prospect of entering into a public/private partnership for the construction and operation of a new, state-of-the-art water plant. When construction is completed in early 2004, Kamloops will have one of the largest membrane filtration water plants in North America (about 60 million litres per day). The tab for this undertaking is about $67 million.

In the course of our investigation, the City hired an independent consultant to assess the relative merits of having a private operator run the water system versus running our own system. The American experience (including Atlanta) was stated to point to significant savings by having a private operator. The Canadian examples (from Atlantic Canada) showed more modest savings of about 10-20 per cent.

However, unlike most provinces, private corporations do not enjoy an interest rate advantage over municipalities in B.C. Many years ago, municipalities in British Columbia became part of the Municipal Finance Authority. This, not-for-profit organization has a credit rating that exceeds even the chartered banks. For example, the B.C. Municipal Finance Authority has an AAA credit rating as opposed to the Bank of Montreal, which has a AA rating. What this means is that the City of Kamloops (or Vancouver or Dawson Creek) can access capital at interest rates as good as or better than virtually any corporation in the world.

Having ready access to capital ensures a level playing field for the public sector and the taxpayer when considering options. If the plant is the same, and the staffing is at the same levels are the same, one would presume that the public sector, with no profit to earn, could be competitive with the private sector. We expect our water plant to operate with a staff of six trained technicians (people who earn about the same in the private sector as the public sector). The expected savings from having a private operator run our water plant, once capital costs were factored out, were modest at best and seemed to be a function of perceived but unnamed efficiencies that would come from having our water system run on a for-profit basis.

As you may have surmised by now, Kamloops has elected to run its own water system. Some city councillors may have been motivated by the philosophy of public service/public sector. Speaking personally, I was not convinced that the numbers favouring privatization added up. Nobody could show me how the private sector could provide the service for less, while still providing a return to its shareholders. Now that I see that Enron was involved, I realize how such a basic accounting principle could be obscured.

Yours truly,
John H. O'Fee, B.Comm. LL.B.
Councillor, City of Kamloops

Your article shows the failure of the profit motive that underlies capitalism: every activity under capitalism becomes simply a way to make money. Money becomes the 'supreme good.' In that case we serve, not others, but money.

David George

Letters
Posted February 11, 2003

We love the series and are glad to see the issue of privatization of public water supplies coming to light before it is too late.

Sincerely,
Susanna G. Russo

Just to think that the city of Toronto and our provincial governments have discussed this type of system sends shivers down my spine. Water belongs to the people and no one should make a profit on it.

Jack Wilson

Thank you for this excellent series. Water privatization is one of the greatest threats to our most precious resource and to the people who depend upon it; that is, all of us. Privatization and the alienation of our water will only proceed if people are ignorant of this threat, and CBC has provided a great service in making more of us aware of it.

Richard Bocking
Victoria, B.C.

I liked the report very much. Sadly it didn't come as any surprise to this Hamiltonian.

I would very much like you to report on "permit to discharge over strength into the sewer systems." Hamilton has heavy industry and very dirty old dumps/landfills (including the infamous Upper Ottawa St. dump) that at a cost are allowed to dump this waste directly into the sewers without any pre-treatment. I am sure the biological filtration in Woodward Ave. is killed. One only has to look at the final effluent dumping into Red Hill Creek at the foot of Woodward Ave. – it looks and smells like raw sewage.

Lorraine Booker

The Water for Profit series seems reasonably balanced.

It unfortunately also makes my blood boil to see that South Africa has become yet another victim of the World Bank policy of putting privatization before any public well being.

Everywhere they go, these vultures do the same thing: privatize at the expense of public health, at the expense of sustainable living practices, and all in the name of profit for a few multinational companies.

Marc Donovan

I have just listened to Bob Carty's report on South Africa's privatization of water (as I have your other reports over the last week on The Current).

I want to say what a marvelous, informative and really enlightening series of reports they have been. For me, it's represented the rare kind of critical journalism that few other news media corporations are prepared to commit themselves to these days. In that respect, the CBC is a lone voice in the (private) corporate wilderness of news media.

I sincerely hope you keep the light burning, as I fear that too few other radio networks are prepared to. Also a special thanks to Bob Carty for such a hard-hitting report on the 'real' issues about water privatization.

Steven Jordan

For the very reasons your feature Water For Profit highlighted, privatizing a water system sets a dangerous precedent.

Peterborough, Ontario's publicly-run water operation is efficient, takes in the required financing to keep infrastructure updated for the health benefits of the public, and is proactive so as to avoid a Walkerton scenario.

The (formerly elected, but now city-appointed) commission is educated by the competent staff, but is also free to challenge staff directives if needed. The checks and balances makes for a safe operation minus the concentration on profit as a private initiative would display.

Fred Rapson
Water Commissoner
Peterborough Utilities Commission

Excellent and timely series.

Adele Hurley
Toronto, Ontario

Send your thoughts

TOP | MAIN PAGE