A section of the upcoming provincial budget bill would be extremely dangerous to the public sector, union officials say.
According to a report done by law firm Sack, Goldblatt and Mitchell, commissioned by CUPE Ontario, schedule 28 to Bill 55 would allow the province to privatize any public service it wanted without review or debate from the legislature.
“In fact, the bill gives Cabinet sweeping powers to authorize contracting out or privatization of any and all ‘Ontario Government Services’ to various persons or corporate entities including private, investor owned companies that may be foreign controlled,” the report states.
“Once that authority is given, there is no requirement for transparency or accountability for privatization decisions.”
Those decisions would be made by a “privatization minister” who could override any other ministry’s decision on what should or should not fall into private hands.
Retired city worker Jules Tupker was one of around a half-a-dozen protestors outside of Michael Gravelle’s constituency office Monday afternoon. He points to recent scandals such as e-health and ORNGE as to why privatization is a bad idea.
“They’re allowed to privatize everything and that is scary stuff,” Tupker said.
Tupker said American HMOs could be contracted to manage the province’s healthcare system. Education could also be contracted out. And because of free trade agreements, once privatized the province wouldn’t be able to take control of those services again.
“There’s language in all three of those trade agreements basically saying once a public service is privatized you cannot bring it back to the public,” he said.
The protestors brought a bag of oranges to Gravelle’s office to symbolize what privatization will open, a crate of oranges Tupker said.
“If we allow this to happen and nobody says anything then the government is going to assume that the public is pleased with their actions,” he said.
Finance minister Dwight Duncan has said he will bring forward an amendment to schedule 28 that should clear up any confusion or fear groups may have.
Gravelle said while he wanted to thank the people who protested outside of his office Monday, in his mind the wording of schedule 28 doesn’t suggest some of the fears people have.
“I think that’s what it is. I think there was ambiguous wording as perceived by others that suggested that they felt opened the door to a more significant possibility of privatization without having any opportunity for debate,” he said.
“The Premier has made it clear that there is no plan to have a fire sale of assets of the government and certainly this particular schedule 28 has obviously created some concern among many organizations.”
Gravelle said the amendment would likely come forward when the budget bill goes to the finance standing committee later this week.
