Utilities

I am not an economist. I am not a consultant, an expert, or an analyst. I am, like you, an ordinary Joe trying to make sense of the world as I try to maintain some financial balance in my life. I read a lot, I watch what’s going on around me, and I don’t like a lot of what I see.

My major concern for the past few years, since I retired from a career in teaching, has been the rate at which the things I used to own have been plundered. Oh, I still have my modest home, my computer, my television set, my books, and my loved ones (not in that order) but I’ve lost what we all had: ownership of the infrastructure that we all depend on.

When I was growing up on the North Side, we got our phone service through ED TEL, our power from Edmonton Power and our water, sewer and garbage service from Edmonton Water and Sanitation. Edmonton Power was far ahead of the curve in environmental sensitivity being one of the cleanest power generating systems in North America. Calgary Power owed us money for power we sold them and didn’t finish paying the debt until 1970. Edmonton was held up as a shining example of how a municipal entity could serve its citizens, show environmental responsibility and still turn a tidy profit to offset taxes.

Then we sold Edmonton Telephones. Edmontonians were told that upgrades to our equipment would be too expensive and, besides, we could funnel almost 500 million dollars into the public coffers. The deal was concluded in March of 1995 and ED TEL, a public utility and one of the few publicly owned telecommunications companies was absorbed into TELUS, a privately owned corporation traded on the stock market. Telus reported a NET profit of $324 million last year.

Then we sold the most profitable portion of EPCOR. Between 1996 and the sale of EPCOR, the utility had returned $1.8 billion in dividends, taxes and franchise fees to the City. Without input from Edmonton rate payers, City Council negotiated the sale of the power generating assets of EPCOR, telling Edmontonians that the power industry was too risky. At the same time, private investors were told (by the same consultants who had told the city that the risk was too great) that this was an absolutely safe investment and that they would be foolish not to get in on the action.

The closing of our money generating airport and the absolute give-away of the arena deal are issues too emotionally charged, at this point, to get into. Suffice it to say that these two, and especially the latter, will drain billions of dollars that would have cascaded into the pockets of all Edmontonians which will, instead, fatten the obscene wealth of a few.

Do Edmontonians know the consequences of this trend? Do they realize that they are part of a movement that has beggared municipalities and states south of the border? Do they realize that this situation is at the heart of the US’s economic problems and the growing disparity between the rich and the rest of us? Throughout North America and much of the western world, civic, provincial (state), and national governments have sold off anything that was profitable to the private sector and are on the verge of bankruptcy.
In her book, “Shock Doctrine”, Naomi Klein describes how even the American military has largely been sold to the private sector with the contracting out of laundry, food services, telecommunications and even close protection (body guard duties). Oh, the soldiers are still paid from taxes and the planes and bombs and ships and jet fuel are still paid for from the public purse, but anywhere that a profit is in the offing, private industry has been more than happy to step in and shoulder THAT responsibility.

The whole game, after all, is about draining as much public wealth as possible and leaving profits to ‘industry’. When the word ‘royal’ is reattached to our navy and air force, the cost of new insignia, letterheads, and re-branding is paid for with public money. When new prisons are built to accommodate inmates whose numbers will swell, not because of a rise in crime rate but a change in legislation, the facilities and staff will funnel off more public resources. In the meantime, one presumes that those services not performed by inmates will be out-sourced, starting with construction costs.

Isn’t it time to stop the plundering of our infrastructure and our limited resources? Those billions of dollars that were once generated by our utilities, our airport, Northlands, etc., will have to be made up by you and me. In the meantime our services will continue to decline because we don’t have the revenue to sustain them; our property taxes will continue to rise; fines and permits and library fees and admissions will continue to spiral upwards; and the burden of keeping the whole under funded boat afloat will fall ever more on ordinary citizens. We should be the guardians of our public wealth, not co-conspirators in its plundering.