3. Do you support keeping vital water services as not-for-profit municipally-run and owned services?

Water is essential to life – no one should be able to control it or expropriate it for profit.  Public financing and public service delivery provides the means of ensuring that our water systems are financially sustainable, that water is affordable and available to future generations.

Here’s an example:

Some municipalities are beginning to learn from their mistakes. Hamilton City Council voted to return its water system to public hands in 2004 after the city and its residents suffered through a decade of high costs, risk avoidance by private operators, environmental damage and secrecy.

The provincial Liberal government has continued to download costs and responsibilities for Ontario’s water infrastructure on to municipalities. 

What is needed from the Ontario government is a strong public commitment to having publicly owned and operated water resources.  The delivery of water services should remain (and where necessary, be reinstated) as the highest public service priority.

Privatizing public services – like water – is not the answer.

4. Are you willing to pressure the provincial government to provide stability in the home care sector by eliminating competitive bidding and reducing the share of profit-driven delivery of home care services?

Take, for example, what has happened to home care, a service that is vital to seniors and persons with disabilities.  For-profit companies have taken over a majority of home care services, replacing trusted not-for-profits, such as the Red Cross and the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON).  The result is a dramatic escalation in cost, forcing government to make deep cuts to housekeeping and personal support – measures that have long kept patients in their homes and out of more expensive institutional beds.  As taxpayers, we are denied access to any information on how much these companies are paid for these services.