The short list of links, below, aims to sidestep the polarized perspectives of the public-private-partnership (PPP) debate*, and present the views of non-partisan citizen groups, public policy analysts, and business and political science professors. If you have other resources you’d like to recommend, please email me.
LINKS
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•Here is a video of a talk given recently by University of Manitoba Economics Professor John Loxley. He just wrote the book Public Service, Private Profit: The political economy of public private partnerships in Canada.
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•The Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition website contains a wealth of information about water and wastewater issues, including privatization.
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•A 2007 study produced for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities looks at the difference between PPP theory and practice. The study’s link isn’t working, but you can try searching for it on the FCM website.
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•The Council of Canadians have issued an important statement about PPPs
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•The Government of Canada’s 2006 Discussion Paper called Public-Private Partnerships for Funding Municipal Drinking Water Infrastructure: What are the Challenges?) comes to some sobering conclusions.
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•Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently conducted a review of Partnerships BC’s PPP evaluation criteria.
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•This 2004 article looks at how the introduction of private operators’ interests into the water supply/sanitation and energy sectors conflict with public interests. (From the Business School at the University of Greenwich in London, England.)
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•Here is a journal article by a US Professor of Political Science and Public Administration: Ethical Futures and Public Private Partnerships. I am trying to get permission to link to the full article. For now, its conclusion is worth repeating here: “This study identifies the systemic erosion of (local) community integrity as the key privatization problem of the future.”
* The pro-PPP camp includes government-funded PPP agencies, construction associations, chambers of commerce, lawyers and financiers (i.e. people who stand to personally and financially gain from these partnerships). The anti-PPP camp includes unions, health coalitions, church groups, seniors organizations, social justice advocates and other organizations with an interest in protecting public jobs and public services.
