by Peter Ewart l Opinion 250

In December, Prince George Mayor Shari Green formed a “Select Committee on Business” to get the views of certain business people on the operations of City Hall. This Select Committee has just released its recommendations, and one of them, point number ten, calls for “ensuring” that the city is “open to innovative procurement options.”

 

So what does “innovative procurement options” mean? 

 

Some people might simply interpret this phrase as the PG municipal government finding some new ways to acquire goods and services of various kinds. But others, with good reason, might interpret it as code words for “contracting out” and “privatization” of city services.

 

In any case, the call for “innovative procurement options” comes right at a time when the Harper federal government is putting the final touches on a free trade agreement with the European Union, otherwise known as the “Comprehensive Economic  and Trade Agreement” (CETA). 

 

One of the aims of CETA is the “innovative practice” of making it easier for European multinationals to bid on “procurement” of municipal services in Canada.  According to recently leaked documents, the municipal services in question include water and other utilities.

 

The Albion Monitor explains that “France has been promoting so-called private-public partnerships [P3s] as a management model for the whole world.” However, it also notes that “this partnership is based on the so-called French school of water management which has given rise to numerous scandals of political corruption.”

 

Another “innovation” that many are concerned about is that CETA will restrict the ability of municipal governments to buy local and buy Canadian. According to some reports, multinationals are already lobbying different levels of governments in Canada to provide services that, in the past, have been publicly run. Under CETA, such forms of multinational “procurement” and privatization may end up being locked in stone.

 

For its part, the Harper government is requiring that federal infrastructure funding to municipalities be of the private-public (P3) kind (on the basis of the claim that other infrastructure funding envelopes have been depleted), thus imposing privatization on local governments. A recent attempt took place in Abbotsford with the water facilities there. However, in a referendum in November, voters rejected by a wide margin the P3 proposal to privatize these water facilities (74% against).

 

Is it merely a coincidence that the Mayor and her Select Committee are using the loaded phrase “innovative procurement options” right at this time? Surely, the significance of the phrase is not lost on them. Does it mean contracting out and privatization? Does it dovetail with the “P3” management model and the looming free trade agreement with the EU which is being aggressively pushed by the federal government? Just what services in Prince George are being targeted?

 

Some explanations are needed.