Presented to "Public Goals, Private Means" Research Colloquium
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, October 3, 2003
Category Archives: Water and Wastewater
Revisiting Water and Wastewater Utility Privatization
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Prepared for the Government of Ontario Panel on the Role of Government. This paper reviews recent setbacks for privatization and explores the reasons behind Canadian municipalities’ reluctance to contract out operations of their water and wastewater utilities.
The New Environmentalists
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Tom Adams, Elizabeth Brubaker and Lawrence Solomon are three leading intellectuals in an umbrella organization – Energy Probe Research Foundation (EPRF) – that is influencing the views of a new generation of policymakers about a host of interrelated issues that include environmental protection, energy, urban planning and foreign aid. These folks can’t be dismissed as politically left or right of centre.
508 reasons to privatize water
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Four hundred and seven. That’s the number of municipally owned water treatment plants that failed Ontario inspections in the year ending March 31, 2003. More than two years after contaminated water killed seven people and sickened 2,300 in the town of Walkerton, Ont., 61% of the province’s water plants still got failing grades in training, sampling, disinfection or water quality. That’s an astonishing figure. And it’s proof that public water provision isn’t working in Ontario.
Private water runs dry
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Last month, Halifax Regional Council pulled out of a deal with a private consortium formed to curb the sewage pollution that has long soiled Halifax Harbour. The agreement’s unravelling – exacerbating a Canada-wide retreat from water and wastewater privatizations – spells bad news for the health of Canadians and the health of the Canadian environment. An anatomy of the breakup shows that Canada’s local governments have a long way to go before they reach the level of sophistication needed to chart their way in privatization waters.
Cleanup contract goes down the drain
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Halifax is walking away from its multimillion-dollar sewage treatment deal over concerns that changes its private partner wanted could cost the municipality more money.
Canada’s best public policy books vie for award
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The short list for the Donner Prize was announced yesterday, highlighting the year’s best Canadian public policy books including titles on global warming, drinking water, immigration, prisons and globalization. Environment Probe Executive Director Elizabeth Brubaker`s Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities was among those listed.
Beyond ideology: Doing whatever works to protect the environment
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Earlier this year, several days after a lengthy interview with a writer for a weekly news magazine, I received a puzzled e-mail. "How would you describe yourself politically?" the writer asked. "Do you lean towards the left or the right?"
A different shade of green
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One spring day five years ago and a few thousand kilometers away, Elizabeth Brubaker saw the signpost to a new environmentalism. She had flown to the UK in March, 1997, to study what had happened to that nation’s water supply since the industry had been privatized. As the executive director of the Toronto-based advocacy group Environment Probe, she contacted an assortment of British green organizations ranging from Surfers Against Sewage to the more established Friends of the Earth.
Hard Water: The uphill campaign to privatize Canada’s waterworks
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A series of reports by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) on water utilities – inspired by the explosive growth of three private water companies in the last 10 years – cites the work of Elizabeth Brubaker, the executive director of Environment Probe.
MPWWR Briefs: Book recommends privatizing water systems
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A new book titled Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities says that privatizing water and sewer systems is cheaper, inspires innovation and eliminates conflicts of interest.
Abusing the public’s trust
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Public Citizen, Ralph Nader’s signature organization, and the director of its environment program, Wenonah Hauter, assert that privatization "is not, and never will be, the solution" to Canada’s water woes (Water is a Right, letter, Jan. 20). For another point of view on the merits of water privatization, I refer readers to Ms. Hauter’s erstwhile colleague, Alex Tsybine.
A thirst for privatization
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The World Bank, in 1998, called privatization "a defining feature of the last two decades." Popular candidates for early privatizations included telecommunications and electric power utilities. Water and wastewater utilities soon followed, haltingly at first and then with greater momentum. If water was, as the Financial Times’s John Barham suggested in 1997, "the last frontier in privatization around the world," it was a frontier that was being aggressively explored.
Liquid Assets, Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities: Book Review
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This book, released on November 6, 2002, calls for the privatization of Canadian water utilities as they have "not served Canadians well, are underfunded, badly operated, and ineffectively regulated". Brubaker, an environ-mentalist, states that "hundreds of municipal systems threaten public health and the environment."
Privatization of harbour cleanup way to go
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Elizabeth Brubaker has some encouraging news for people who dream of once again being able to safely swim in Halifax Harbour or the Northwest Arm.
Privatization went wrong from start
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Elizabeth Brubaker says private firms can provide water and sewers, but are failing here.
Privatize water utilities: lobbyist
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Cities like Saint John faced with spending millions of dollars to overhaul aging water systems might want to consider privatizing the service. Elizabeth Brubaker, executive-director of Environment Probe, has just written a book titled Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities.
From sea to slimy sea
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For three days in September, a mechanical failure at Winnipeg’s largest sewage treatment plant sent the waste from 370,000 people spewing, untreated, into the Red River. The putrid mixture of human, household, and industrial wastewater poured into the river at the rate of 230,000 cubic metres a day, poisoning the water, threatening fish, creating a stench, and alarming downstream residents who feared that the contamination could seep into their wells.
Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities
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By Elizabeth Brubaker
This book argues that public provision of water and wastewater services has not served Canadians well. Based on successes in other jurisdictions, it calls for the privatization of utilities and examines the conditions — such as competition, effective regulation, legal liability, and union support — necessary to make privatization work.
Published in 2002 by the University of Toronto’s Centre for Public Management.
Unsafe water act
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When the Ontario government received the final report of the Walkerton Inquiry in May, it promised to take action on each of Commissioner Dennis O’Connor’s recommendations. Tuesday, as part of that promise, Environment Minister Chris Stockwell introduced a Safe Drinking Water Act.
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