Something is Rotten in the City of Winnipeg
May 20, 2010
financial, p3, sewage, vandal, veolia
As expected, Winnipeg City Council yesterday voted to approve the hiring of Veolia Canada to design and build upgrades of and partially operate two sewage treatment plants in Winnipeg.
This story has spent a fair bit of time in the media of late. And there’s good reason for that – nobody knows much about the deal. Not just the general public, but councillors. And the Mayor. But it’s no big deal, right? As Mayor Katz said, we just need to have some faith in the city staff who have done due diligence on the project.
To begin with, it’s not even obvious if this is a public-private partnership (P3) or not. That’s how little information about the deal has been released. Although city officials claim that 10 to 20 percent of the estimated $1.2 billion upgrade will be saved by bringing in Veolia, it is unclear just how much they will be paid to manage the project. Or how exactly they will be able to save the money for the city. Or how much of the daily operation of the facilities Veolia will manage. Basically, nobody knows much about anything with regard to this deal.
It is certainly reasonable to expect that City Councillors will act with caution and keep some information confidential when sensitive financial deals are before them. After all, we elect them to make decisions for us. If we don’t like those decisions, we have the ability to vote them out of office in the next election.
However, what’s especially troubling about the Veolia case is that Councillors are voting on something for which they have little more information than the general public. The deal is so secretive that even the Mayor claims to not know that much about it. But we should “have faith” in City staff who have more expertise than the rest of us. But City staff are not accountable to the electorate – City Council is. And for Council to vote on a project as significant as this without having all necessary information before them is almost unheard of. Is this democracy? It certainly doesn’t look like it.
Perhaps Councillor Dan Vandal put it best during the Council meeting when he commented that the deal seems to be driven by ideology that favours the private sector over the public service. The Mayor and EPC seem to be willing to sacrifice transparency and accountability in order to get this deal done.
But it was Vandal’s cautionary words that should cause us the most concern: “Once this is approved…and Veolia is managing our waste water for the next 30 years, they are going to do everything in their power to manage our water next. You can count on it.”
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