In 2004 the Ontario Ministry of Public Infrastructure appointed an “expert panel” to think, consult, study and report back on ways of meeting the province’s infrastructure funding deficit in water and wastewater systems.  Mr. Harry Swain chaired the panel.  The panel’s report, presented to the Ontario government in 2005, is called Watertight:  The case for change in Ontario’s water and wastewater sector.

There are several fundamental objections to the findings, recommendations, and philosophical outlook of this report.

Ontario’s growing water infrastructure problems were largely caused by policies put in place by the previous Government in Ontario.  These include:

Further downloading of responsibility for water and wastewater services to the municipalities while they were already being saddled with other responsibilities;

Cuts to the operating budget of Ontario Clean Water Agency and the Ministry of the Environment during the late 1990s;

An aging infrastructure, growing infrastructure demands and increasing regulatory standards not matched by increasing public investment.

The Watertight report advocates even more of the very same policies that have put Ontario’s water infrastructure into this precarious situation:

More downloading of costs onto municipalities;

Greater privatization and corporatization of the publicly-owned infrastructure;

Heavy-handed interference with decision-making over public services.

The recommendations of the report are based on an unfounded ideological assumption that private business operation will always be more efficient than public operation.  This is completely false, and particularly so in the case of public services.