Articles
General · 23rd November 2009
WADING IN
by Jason Youmans 11/18/2009 Courtesy of Monday Magazine
Maude Barlow comes to town to talk sewage treatment
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow often says just what the country’s economic and political elite need to hear, and usually right when they least want to hear it. Take, for example, her appearance at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards to receive a citation for lifetime achievement. The event was sponsored in part by environmental villains Shell and Nexen, sparking debate in green circles about the ethics of accepting such a prize. Former federal Green Party leader Joan Russow wrote on the Peace Earth and Justice forum at the time, “The sponsorship of these two companies makes a mockery of the award.” But then came Barlow’s acceptance speech and the keynote address for the evening.
It all started innocently enough, with Barlow making the usual thank-yous, before drifting on to the importance of protecting the Sacred headwaters of B.C.’s Stikine, Nass and Skeena rivers. And that’s where the fun began, as Barlow told the audience at Toronto’s Liberty Grand, “Royal Dutch Shell plans to extract coal bed methane gas from the area’s anthracite deposits across an enormous area of one million acres, using a highly invasive mining procedure that leaves behind a legacy of toxic water.” And then the punchline: “I am proud to announce tonight that I will be giving my award money to the Sacred Headwaters Coalition and the First Nations in the area to support their fight to protect these pristine ancient fishing grounds in northern British Columbia. Your struggle is our struggle.”
If the Shell execs in the audience weren’t feeling the heat yet, the room was about to get a little hotter as Barlow sunk her teeth into plans to build a refinery for Alberta tar sands oil in Sarnia, Ontario, where surrounding first nations communities have paid a steep price living next door to Canada’s chemical manufacturing heartland.
It’s this kind of pull-no-punches assessment of the country’s economic and social landscape that has made Barlow a household name and irritant to the nation’s power brokers. She has been at the helm of the Council of Canadians, an 80,000-member citizens’ organization—whose founders also include Farley Mowat and Margaret Atwood, among others—for more than 20 years, helping lead the fight against what the group sees as the erosion of Canada’s economic and cultural sovereignty through increasing corporatization and commodification of our natural resources.
This week Barlow is in Victoria to talk about the need to keep our impending regional sewage treatment project under public control, rather than developing it through the public-private partnership model so in fashion these days and that local labour—which co-organized Barlow’s visit—feels is being laid out behind closed doors.
“The most important thing that people need to know about public-private partnerships is that they’re about profit making,” says Barlow. “In the end, [the companies] have the same amount of money to work with that the public sector has, but from that same amount of money they have to generate anywhere from 15 to 20 percent profit for their shareholders. And that means they either have to have fewer employees, or raise the rates, or cut service or most likely all three together.”
Barlow adds that while the capital costs of the region’s sewage treatment infrastructure is going to be split into thirds between the regional, provincial and federal governments, that up-front cost only covers construction—not the yearly operational payments over the lifetime of the plants, which, she says will inevitably increase beyond the initial price outlined in the contract if a private sector provider is welcomed on board.
In fairness, no decisions have yet been made by the CRD board about how the plants will be built or operated. However, the B.C. government has a stated preference for the P3 model for all capital projects over $50 million. Corporate finance firm Ernst, Young Orenda, a company with a long record of involvement in designing P3 arrangements, was brought in early in the process to design a business case for the region’s treatment plants, but the discussion paper on procurement options, which was scheduled for release in October has not yet been made public. This is making Barlow suspicious.
“This notion that ‘Well, we just haven’t done it yet,’ or ‘You’ll see it one day’ is short-circuiting democracy and I’ve seen it all over the world and it is wrong,” she says. “People have the right to see that documentation and they need to have lots of time to look at it and comment on it. This should be a very public process.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Barlow would turn her attention to this particular issue, overlapping as it does two of her enduring passions: water—she just wrapped up a one year term as the special advisor on water to the president of the UN General Assembly—and the erosion of our public institutions by private interests.
“Once you’ve let it get away from the public realm, you can’t stop the competition from other country’s corporations and you really do lose control piece by piece by piece and I’ve watched it happen in too many parts of the world,” she says.
Barlow also suggests that in other parts of the world, privatization of wastewater treatment has marked the thin edge of the wedge for large multinational firms with their eyes on a bigger prize—water delivery services.
Ultimately it will be up to our elected representatives around the CRD board table to determine how wastewater treatment is delivered. Barlow says experience shows there’s only one way it should be.
“There’s a place for the private sector in helping us in the world and helping us come up with good technology for water use reduction and other things, but not running our water systems, because it is easily done and well done by a good not-for-profit public utility.”
Maude Barlow will be speaking at St. Ann’s Academy Auditorium at 7 p.m. on Friday, November 20 (2009). Admission is free.
-
Who is Maude Barlow? Here's a short video,
Maude Barlow on Water Privatization and the World's Water Crisis
courtesy of "The HUB" - the world's first participatory media site for human rights --
Maude Barlow comes to town to talk sewage treatment
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow often says just what the country’s economic and political elite need to hear, and usually right when they least want to hear it. Take, for example, her appearance at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards to receive a citation for lifetime achievement. The event was sponsored in part by environmental villains Shell and Nexen, sparking debate in green circles about the ethics of accepting such a prize. Former federal Green Party leader Joan Russow wrote on the Peace Earth and Justice forum at the time, “The sponsorship of these two companies makes a mockery of the award.” But then came Barlow’s acceptance speech and the keynote address for the evening.
It all started innocently enough, with Barlow making the usual thank-yous, before drifting on to the importance of protecting the Sacred headwaters of B.C.’s Stikine, Nass and Skeena rivers. And that’s where the fun began, as Barlow told the audience at Toronto’s Liberty Grand, “Royal Dutch Shell plans to extract coal bed methane gas from the area’s anthracite deposits across an enormous area of one million acres, using a highly invasive mining procedure that leaves behind a legacy of toxic water.” And then the punchline: “I am proud to announce tonight that I will be giving my award money to the Sacred Headwaters Coalition and the First Nations in the area to support their fight to protect these pristine ancient fishing grounds in northern British Columbia. Your struggle is our struggle.”
If the Shell execs in the audience weren’t feeling the heat yet, the room was about to get a little hotter as Barlow sunk her teeth into plans to build a refinery for Alberta tar sands oil in Sarnia, Ontario, where surrounding first nations communities have paid a steep price living next door to Canada’s chemical manufacturing heartland.
It’s this kind of pull-no-punches assessment of the country’s economic and social landscape that has made Barlow a household name and irritant to the nation’s power brokers. She has been at the helm of the Council of Canadians, an 80,000-member citizens’ organization—whose founders also include Farley Mowat and Margaret Atwood, among others—for more than 20 years, helping lead the fight against what the group sees as the erosion of Canada’s economic and cultural sovereignty through increasing corporatization and commodification of our natural resources.
This week Barlow is in Victoria to talk about the need to keep our impending regional sewage treatment project under public control, rather than developing it through the public-private partnership model so in fashion these days and that local labour—which co-organized Barlow’s visit—feels is being laid out behind closed doors.
“The most important thing that people need to know about public-private partnerships is that they’re about profit making,” says Barlow. “In the end, [the companies] have the same amount of money to work with that the public sector has, but from that same amount of money they have to generate anywhere from 15 to 20 percent profit for their shareholders. And that means they either have to have fewer employees, or raise the rates, or cut service or most likely all three together.”
Barlow adds that while the capital costs of the region’s sewage treatment infrastructure is going to be split into thirds between the regional, provincial and federal governments, that up-front cost only covers construction—not the yearly operational payments over the lifetime of the plants, which, she says will inevitably increase beyond the initial price outlined in the contract if a private sector provider is welcomed on board.
In fairness, no decisions have yet been made by the CRD board about how the plants will be built or operated. However, the B.C. government has a stated preference for the P3 model for all capital projects over $50 million. Corporate finance firm Ernst, Young Orenda, a company with a long record of involvement in designing P3 arrangements, was brought in early in the process to design a business case for the region’s treatment plants, but the discussion paper on procurement options, which was scheduled for release in October has not yet been made public. This is making Barlow suspicious.
“This notion that ‘Well, we just haven’t done it yet,’ or ‘You’ll see it one day’ is short-circuiting democracy and I’ve seen it all over the world and it is wrong,” she says. “People have the right to see that documentation and they need to have lots of time to look at it and comment on it. This should be a very public process.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Barlow would turn her attention to this particular issue, overlapping as it does two of her enduring passions: water—she just wrapped up a one year term as the special advisor on water to the president of the UN General Assembly—and the erosion of our public institutions by private interests.
“Once you’ve let it get away from the public realm, you can’t stop the competition from other country’s corporations and you really do lose control piece by piece by piece and I’ve watched it happen in too many parts of the world,” she says.
Barlow also suggests that in other parts of the world, privatization of wastewater treatment has marked the thin edge of the wedge for large multinational firms with their eyes on a bigger prize—water delivery services.
Ultimately it will be up to our elected representatives around the CRD board table to determine how wastewater treatment is delivered. Barlow says experience shows there’s only one way it should be.
“There’s a place for the private sector in helping us in the world and helping us come up with good technology for water use reduction and other things, but not running our water systems, because it is easily done and well done by a good not-for-profit public utility.”
Maude Barlow will be speaking at St. Ann’s Academy Auditorium at 7 p.m. on Friday, November 20 (2009). Admission is free.
-
Who is Maude Barlow? Here's a short video,
Maude Barlow on Water Privatization and the World's Water Crisis
courtesy of "The HUB" - the world's first participatory media site for human rights --