THE RECORD
May 01, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Can anybody name a single service that may have become cheaper after deregulation and privatization? I have been looking at this question for a number of years, but haven't been able to find a single case. All I can find are vastly increased, sometimes multiplied costs to the public, loss of services, run down infrastructures and unnecessary unemployment combined with the waste of talents.

We estimate that since the US-Canada FTA came in 13 years ago, our living costs have doubled and tripled, without any corresponding increase in our incomes. Which in our case is old age pension, but we can't find any doubling or tripling of wages either.

Does anybody know anybody who may have benefited from the privatization of the road services by Zalm? Are they costing less to the taxpayers now? How about the sale of BC Gas? Who are the beneficiaries? Have prices gone down? When BC Tel was deregulated our phone bill jumped 30 percent. In some cases 50 percent and repair services practically disappeared. How about your bills? Have they gone down? Are we receiving better service for our higher payments?

We can hear the same horror stories from all around the world. Electricity and water for families suddenly beyond their means. Whole cities blacked out because of neglected services and the firing of repair personnel by multinational companies. Cholera epidemics in Africa, where water services have been privatized on demands of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Clean water has now become a luxury for the majority, with people being criminally charged for stealing water for their children.

People have been killed in Bolivia while protesting against the sale of the country's water supply to the Californian Bechtel corporation. The privatization has been cancelled by their government, now Bechtel is suing them at the WTO for the loss of profits.

When Argentina experienced financial problems the World Bank and the IMF moved in, demanding wholesale privatization of services and huge interest payments, which crippled the economy of the formerly prosperous country and left 30 dead during the demonstrations of the past few weeks. Now the country and the people have nothing, while multinationals strip them bare in search of profits.

There were major demonstrations in 23 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas against WB and IMF policies last year, involving millions of people, with about 76 killed. Our media completely ignored all this in favour of accident reports and petty crimes.

The London based World Development Movement wrote in a just released report: "By undermining democracy and rolling back the state, developing country governments may be left powerless to act in the interests of their citizens." Within the last couple of days the IMF was back in Argentina demanding more sale of public properties, more cutbacks and higher interest rates.

Now we come to our beloved BC government's latest wealth and prosperity tricks, based exactly on WB and IMF neo classical economic policies. According to them the only purpose of the state is to see to the free movement of capital and that there should not be any public ownership of anything. When public services are cut to pieces and privatized, more money flows out of the country into foreign bank accounts, this they see as better for "growth."

The marvelous accounting system used by these economic masterminds can report booming economies and large growth, as in the case of India, while millions starve and there are mass suicides of family farmers and small business people.

I wrote in my first column after the last provincial elections that in spite of his huge majority, I expect Gordon Campbell to last about two years in office. Which, in my opinion, has been the plan of his handlers for years. Campbell is a mindless puppet who has been appointed by Howe St. as the fall guy who will do everything demanded of him. His job is to wreck BC's economy so the pieces can be picked up by the multinationals for a song. He will then get his walking papers with a few directorships attached, to try to soothe the enraged public. Unfortunately, according to my calculations his successor will most likely be Christy Clark, who quite frankly, scares the daylights out of me. A young Margaret Thatcher, a cold blooded ideologue without any apparent human feelings, or concerns.

Let us look at the timetable for the future of BC, by the long laid plans of the Fraser Institute and Howe St,. themselves small players in the overall game. A year ago this was only a calculated prediction, now all the pieces are falling in place for the execution

Campbell promised tax cuts for the lowest two brackets. Before even officially becoming Premier he made large taxcuts to the highest brackets, literally stealing over $2 billion from the public's treasury. I wrote at the time that ordinary people will pay many times the few dollars of the taxcuts into the pockets of private service providers. It is happening now and will increase in the future. People are brainwashed into hating taxes, even when they provide services at the lowest cost, but welcome paying into exorbitant profit schemes, not realizing that profits are also a form of taxation.

Then came the "gilt edged" commission that invented a $3.8 billion structural deficit, legitimizing the cuts, sellouts and the privatization of public services. This works out to about ten times the cost of the NDP's fast ferry disaster, which at least employed a lot of people for a number of years.

Unemployment is important in this scenario. According to neo-classical theory minimum wages and labour unions are trade distortions and against the principles of the labour market. In other words, every workplace should have dozens of unemployed begging to be let in, competing for the lowest wages. I remember seeing this as a boy, during the Depression. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the government is to wreck the union movement and lower wages for everybody as the road to perfect "competitive equilibrium." The end result to be a few holding millions hostage, enjoying free blackmail privileges and calling it a "market economy."
The artificial deficit also gives them the green flag for the squandering of public assets, exactly on the lines of
WB and IMF demands. Now Campbell is negotiating for the sale of our Hydro services to some American buyers of the worst reputation, including involvement in the California energy gauging and the Enron scandal. California is trying to reregulate and renationalize, while our idiots are selling out.

Our present system works well for the public, we have some of the lowest rates around, but Howe St. is looking for big profits, and the projected increases are 30 percent to the public and 60 percent to industry. These are only promises. According to the reputation of the buyers, we can easily be paying double of the present rates within a year, with thousands unemployed and our bills coming from Texas, no repair crews, no services.

The 60 percent energy increase will kill the economy of BC, already deindustrialized by NAFTA, with manufacturing destroyed, or fleeing abroad, while blaming the NDP. Yet, all this is moving by long standing plans.

The increased energy costs will put virtually all our lumber mills out of business. Also other industries that remained here on account of affordable energy costs. Once these privatizations take place they remain permanent according to NAFTA rules.
The next step will be the dismantling of the Labour Code, making it more difficult for workers to unionize and making it easier to decertify. The lumber industry will be decimated, with potentially tens of thousands of jobs lost. This will permit the companies to demand decertification and forcing the present staff, with the exception of union officers who will be fired, to work for peanuts. This is what they call "building investor confidence."

The long range plans also include the sale of vast areas of present Crown land, again according to Fraser Institute plans, most likely to absentee, foreign buyers. You can then expect the total exploitation of resources without any public access and supervision. This is where Campbell's hoped for investments will go, without any benefits to the public, yet accounted by our economists as part and growth of the GDP.

The recent demolition of the health care and education systems are to a great extent smoke screens to divert attention from Hydro and other sellouts. As far the health and old people's homes and care facilities are concerned, part of the plan is to depopulate rural areas so they can be picked up by speculators and developers.

The proposed facilities will rely quite a bit on volunteer workers and charities, while encouraging private medical service suppliers to come in, again mostly from the States, who in turn will sue under NAFTA and the WTO for total privatization. The same way the UPS suit is proceeding to outlaw the delivery parcels by Canada Post.

There was a letter in our paper last week, ending with "Preston Manning, where are you now when we need your vision?" Indeed. Preston's vision was for the whole of Canada what Campbell is doing to BC. If anything, Stephen Harper's vision is that the dismantling of Canadian society is not proceeding fast enough to make it more competitive.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International