Robin Mathews presentation is below;

TITLE. “PRIVATIZATION: LOCAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL THEFT”.

BRIEF SUMMARY: The privatization of water (and the releasing of its control without supervision to private corporations) connects directly to the general assault on democratic structures locally and across the (Western) world. The process is local and global. It intends to remove public participation (legislative and other) from decision making and to direct all wealth held by the “commons” (water being a key component) to private control and use. The assault on water as a commonly shared resource has a history. Canada, British Columbia, Vancouver Island are a major part of that history.

PRIVATIZATION: LOCAL, NATIONAL,
INTERNATIONAL THEFT


Privatization. The word is loaded – especially by the propagandists for corporate rule. They use the word to describe what they say is the route to efficiency, improved service, reduced costs of operation, a lowered tax burden for citizens, openness, transparency, accessibility – you add your own list of positive words.

Those truths were demonstrated as clearly as they need be when the tour of the local water shed area planned by the organizers of this Forum had to fight private corporate holders of the land surface to be able to drive buses through it so that people could look at the land area from which their own drinking water is drawn. And, then, had to cancel one tour area because the demands made by the large corporate owner of the surface land were so onerous. So much for openness, transparency, and accessibility.

Privatization – I will argue here – is theft.

The privatization movement, as I speak, is in full flood across all the known democracies. That is no accident. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund who are touted as saviours of countries in financial difficulties BOTH demand - as a part of providing essential bail-out loans - that the countries concerned privatize EVERYTHING – and open their borders to giant foreign corporations to do the privatizing.

We will see one result of that process – in a South American water privatization.

One of the most important resources of public wealth in the world, and in Canada, is water. In British Columbia we can see clearly the huge, secretive theft taking place because water in B.C. has always been considered a public asset. In B.C. the use of water for drinking and personal use is still, so far, apparently a public utility. But only apparently. The rivers of British Columbia, for instance, were until very recently believed to be safely administered in the hands of a generally benign and efficient public owner, BC Hydro.

The privatization of river power in the province, racing ahead as I speak, is, I suggest, theft. I’ll go as far as to say that privatization is, nearly always, theft. For privatization is engaged in by governments and corporations intending theft – the theft of public assets to be delivered to private corporations for private gain.

If that seems a strong statement, consider what privatization is, the structures it builds, and its effect on society.

FIRST: privatization is the transferring of public wealth to private ownership for the primary purpose of exploiting and selling that wealth in order to generate profit for a few “owners” and “investors”.

SECOND: privatization creates structures of oversight - regulatory commissions, inspection processes, reviews of operation, or some other relational structures to provide for “the public interest”.

We think especially of large tracts of land, of water, of electricity, of education as “public wealth”. But in the most general terms the whole society is considered as (and must be considered) “public wealth”. We speak of the common weal. We use the term “commonwealth”. We speak of land and public space as “the commons”. And, indeed, we name the legislature, the parliament which makes laws for us all in Canada “the House of Commons”.

Since the whole society is a commons, a commonwealth, structures of government relation with private corporate activity are put in place almost universally. Food production and processing are inspected. Medicine production is overseen. Automobile safety is tested and reviewed. The examples of structures in place to protect the public – as the basic wealth of the nation - are endless.

There has been some balance between publicly-owned and privately-owned wealth in Canada. That is breaking down. And, now, in what is called “a free market economy and social order” – which most of the world has or is getting – the primary theory of society is that the so-called “free market” is “natural”.

Because that condition is accepted by power in the economy and the politics – that the “free market” is “natural”, that private ownership of everything is “natural”, government exists more and more to assure that the “free market” operates without hindrance or interference.

That means a number of things.

It means that there will be, inevitably, conflict between the primary citizens of the Free Market Economy – who are the corporations –and the primary citizens of The Real Democracy – who are the members of the population. That conflict arises because the private corporations are essentially anti-democratic. Their first priority is NOT to assure the well-being of the community, of the commons, but to assure wealth and power for a few.
Regulatory bodies must exist because the primary citizens of the Free Market Economy - the corporations will, inevitably –unless regulated – sacrifice the health, welfare, and the lives of the population in order to gain wealth and power for a few.

It means, also, increasingly, as privatization is accepted as the desirable end in a democratic society that government will – and must – accept more and more direction from private corporations, and the goals of government must be, increasingly, the goals of private corporations – who are the primary citizens in a “Free Market Economy”.

It means, as well, that as privatization is accepted as the desirable end in a democratic “Free Market Economy” that private corporate representatives will occupy power positions in democratic parliaments, and that the members of parliaments and corporations will become more and more interchangeable.

[In that regard “Public Private Partnerships” are simple the open, public face of government being moved into a position in which it is in the hands of private corporations, in fact, or in a position in which its primary role is to serve and support the ends and aims of private corporations.]

In Alberta, to give one brief example of the growing ‘merger’, premier Ed Stelmach has hired a Suncor vice-president, and he has made her an assistant deputy minister with the task of directing the Oil Sands Sustainable Development Secretariat. Heather Kennedy, Suncor vice president, we are told, continues to receive her salary – not from the public purse but - from the huge private corporation, Suncor. [Tar Sands. Nikiforuk. Page159]

It means, finally, as is happening in all senior legislative bodies in Canada, that democratically elected representatives must be robbed of power, must be repressed and made ineffective – for if they are permitted to represent the interests of the population from which they are elected, they will antagonize large private corporations – and in cases like Gordon Campbell, Ed Stelmach, and Stephen Harper – they will antagonize their party leaders who – more and more – act for large private corporations before all else.

In British Columbia the one Liberal MLA who openly resisted the corrupt transfer of publicly owned BC Rail to the private corporation CNR , Paul Nettleton, was run out of the Gordon Campbell party. That action was necessary to make possible the corrupt privatization.

We know that in the House of Commons today no member can be nominated in any constituency without the approval of the leader. That means that – no matter what the people of a constituency want – an aspiring candidate must be pleasing so someone who may know almost nothing about the voters in the constituency.

We know that appointed people in Stephen Harper’s office may now tell elected representatives what they may or may not say, and even if they may speak publicly. We know that Stephen Harper even denies cabinet ministers the right to speak publicly unless they have his permission. In a democracy like ours, CABINET is traditionally a gathering of equals, the equality intended to prevent dictatorial powers from falling into one person’s hands.

Stephen Harper is and has been an ally and representative of private corporations and their view of the Free Market Economy. He is moving those private corporations into position as the real government of Canada. His backing of the development of the tar sands in Alberta is total. And he is personally responsible for the fact that ALL federal regulatory bodies connected to the tar sands are powerless and useless. Their only purpose – as far as can be determined – is to guarantee that the unregulated rape of the environment, the pollution of underground water sources, and the looting and contamination of the Athabasca river will go completely unchecked and, where possible, unrecorded.

In 2007 Alberta’s environment minister Rob Renner declared that ”it’s not the role of Alberta Environment [his ministry] to advocate on behalf of the environment”. And he said that the “speed with which economic development takes place is not something the government has control over….” (Nikiforuk, p. 161) The speed with which economic development happens, we have to assume, is entirely in the hands of private, for profit corporations.

Stephen Harper’s best friends count, among them, major climate change deniers. He tried to appoint Gwyn Morgan, former head of EnCana (one of the largest holders of tar sands leases) to oversee government accountability. Says Andrew Nikiforuk, “Al Gore was right when he observed that ‘the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election and protect their interests’.(Tar Sands, p. 163)

The excellent local example of the destruction of a regulatory body is the legislation Gordon Campbell is putting in place to drain the B.C. Utilities Commission of any real power. In July 2009, the Commission rejected the Gordon Campbell Long Term Acquisition Plan to force BC Hydro to buy, expensively, electric power from private corporations who have gained almost complete control over river power generated electricity. The Utilities Commission said the Acquisition Plan is not in the public interest.

It seems clear Campbell wanted to lock-in obscene agreements for private corporations that succeeding governments would not be able to break.

When blocked – in the public interest – from proceeding with that Plan, Campbell had legislation written to rob the Utilities Commission of power and to prevent the public interest from being served. That piece of legislation, as you might suppose, is called the Clean Energy Act.

THE THIRD aspect of privatiztion that must be understood is its effect on regulation and regulatory bodies. As corporations get more power in and over governments, regulation (a) weakens significantly, or (b) is wiped out, or (c) becomes a mask or front to protect criminal corporate behaviour from being seen by the public.

In the huge investment bank meltdown in the U.S.A. in 2008, many commentators reported that the REGULATIONS would have been effective – but they were never enforced by the regulators.

...continued in Part 3