The poll also showed that three of every four Canadians believe that good jobs will be lost, environmental protection will fall and access to good services will deteriorate for the poor, women and visible minorities.Such opposition by citizens hopefully will stop WMI's growth hopes through privatization.
The biannual polls also show that few people think that politicians who promote privatization of public services want to improve services. Citizens believe the most driving motives for privatization are short term savings and providing contracts to their political supporters. Only one in six believe improving quality is a reason while only 12% believe that cutting public sector jobs is the reason. For more detail contact CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
In the CUPE 1999 Annual Report on Privatization, CUPE President Judy Darcy writes that "doing more with less is an impressive sound bite. ... Politicians looking for a quick fix and corporations looking to made quick profits, are promoting privatization as the magic answer to government deficit problems." Darcy also spoke on the fundamental change to Canadian society from privatization. "Privatization is undermining the public services that bind us together and underpin the foundations or our democracy," she wrote.
CUPE also reports that corporations are targeting sectors with less public visibility such as cleaning, food services, garbage collection and information technology" instead of "doctors, teachers or public utilities.
Private operators taking over public services bring with them an arsenal of cost-cutting measures that includes slashing jobs. In four short years between 1992 and 1996, 121,000 public sector jobs vanished, many due to privatization. Good jobs are being replaced with privatized or contracted out jobs that pay less, don't have union protection, offer fewer benefits and are often part-time, temporary or casual,"
CUPE also charges corporations profit through public subsidies. "The sales pitch for privatization usually stressed savings for the public treasury. Yet mounting evidence from privatization experiments shows that promised savings are more apparent than real. ... For corporate interests it's a perfect deal: low-risk, high-return ventures with guaranteed funding and little in the way of public accountability. Tax dollars are still collected and spent. The dramatic difference is that public control over that spending is slipping into the hands of corporations and investors, converting public funds into private capital. ...
Many expenses don't show up until after private companies get their foot in the door. Having underbid public providers to secure a contract, corporations then introduce user fees or increase rates once they've gained control of a public service. ..."
Once a service has been handed over to a a private company, public agencies soon find themselves without the in-house equipment, infrastructure and know-how to provide the service directly, leaving the public at the mercy of a newly-created private monopoly. While may public services are de facto monopolies, there exists a far higher level of accountability than the cloak of corporate secrecy ... Once a corporation corners the market in a service, they are well-placed to impose new user fees, extract higher service charges from government and cut corners to maximize profit."
With the recent mega mergers of waste management firms there remain only two large firms in the US and three in Canada. Municipalities run the risk of price fixing among these huge corporations and the inability to provide the waste management services themselves. Citizens should take every action necessary to maintain public services in the monopolistic waste management industry. Waste Management Inc. is the largest of the three and the most in trouble with the law and its stockholders.
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