Getting it Right

 

Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up. (Farley Mowat)

From time to time the writer ought to look back at what he has fashioned while putting fingers to keyboard.

This can be a painful exercise. Were the facts right? Was the real story presented?

Case in point is a news report and follow up opinion piece written in the summer of 2017.

That report dealt with a Norfolk County community meeting focussed on hydro privatization and the hardship for local families and businesses brought about by high hydro rates. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) sponsored the event.

One of the panelists that evening was Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett.

“Port Rowaners pay more (for electricity) than every jurisdiction in North American except Hawaii,” proclaimed Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett to the seventy or so people in attendance at the Port Rowan Community Centre.

Former New Democratic Party MPP Rosario Marchese, another panelist, presented something of a history lesson. Prior to 1905, Marchese asserted, Ontario had “private electricity” - only affordable to the very wealthy. Then Conservative politician Adam Beck eliminated the profit and the profiteers establishing the principle of “hydro at cost”. Beck’s initiative meant that for nearly a century Ontario businesses thrived and its people prospered.

This all changed in 1999 when Premier Mike Harris deregulated hydro - splitting it up into 5 bureaucracies. Harris “gave away” the Bruce nuclear station to a British firm. That company now turns a profit of $650 million per annum. Marchese was emphatic on this point.

Panelist Jeremy Thibodeau, from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU ) followed. Thibodeau spoke about the We Own It campaign, a grassroots movement of Ontarians who want to keep public services public.

The Vice-President of OPSEU Local 230 touched on other potential privatizations such as one under consideration in Grey County. This southwestern Ontario municipality was considering selling one of its Long Term Care Facilities (Grey Gables) to private interests. The writer spoke with Thibodeau following the meeting and learned more.

In fact, later that month Grey County Council gave final approval to build a new 166 bed Long Term Care Facility and set the wheels in motion to sell Grey Gables to a private operator.

In an update commentary the writer allowed that there were lots of complexities to the issue. But contended that Ontario’s cities, towns and villages would “continue to feel these kinds of pressures as senior levels of government carry on implementing their austerity agendas.”

This all took place in 2017. What has happened since?

Well Toby Barrett’s party is in government. What have they done on the hydro file?

Barrett’s new boss, Premier Doug Ford, kept a promise. Taking a page from Donald Trump’s slim management playbook, he fired people.

“The CEO and the board of Hydro One, they’re done, they’re gone,” Ford, (the self-proclaimed businessman-not-a-politician) boasted in a hastily called news conference in July of 2018.

But back in Norfolk County we Port Rowaners are still paying too much for hydro.

While campaigning in 2018 Ford promised to slash electricity rates by 12 per cent. But since he took office, the cost of electricity has headed north not south. Although the high rates are a burden to many the issue seems to have disappeared from the front pages.

Meanwhile long term care facilities are in the news every day thanks in part to Ford policies and unknowing veneration of the private sector.

Back in Grey County there have been developments. Municipal elections brought change – ten new members on the 18 seat Council. Long term care was an issue for the voters.

In the early days of the new Council, the 2017 motion to privatize was rescinded. The new Council decided not to sell Grey Gables. The We Own It campaign had an impact in supporting publicly owned and managed long-term care.

Now with COVID front and centre every day, a light has been shone on long term care, other long neglected services and the limitations of privatization.

Required reading for all decision makers is a study released last month in a peer-reviewed general medical journal.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published research that looked at COVID-19 impacts in long-term care homes in Ontario and British Columbia. Both provinces have a mix of non-profit and for-profit homes although Ontario’s balance leans much more to for-profit institutions (nearly three in five Ontario homes are private as compared to one in three in B.C.)

The research is clear:

“Existing evidence suggests that, on average, for-profit homes deliver inferior care across a variety of process and outcome measures” and “for-profit status was associated with the extent of COVID-19 outbreaks and number of resident deaths.”

This is a fact and that is the truth.

What about our writer?

Seems that while looking at hydro issues (important as they are to people) our scribbler has stumbled onto a more all encompassing story: The private sector ain’t the answer, stupid.