Fed up and can’t take much more!
By Bill Fox/Columnist
Every time I drive on Highway 407, I think of how terrible it is that we Ontario taxpayers don’t own it any longer. What a cash cow it could have been for our government, but of course, Premier Mike Harris sold it. Apparently, according to some experts, he sold it for one quarter of its value! With the proceeds, he sent every family a cheque for $200 and was able to brag that he had balanced the budget. Before Harris, the Peterson Liberals had determined that the highway would have been established as a province-owned toll collection highway in order to assist with bringing in further revenue for the province. Rae’s NDP continued the proposal and the plan carried on until 1995 when the Harris PCs came to power.
The total cost of the highway that opened in 1997 was $1.6 billion, but the amount of money spent in the 1970s to acquire the land that the highway ran along amounts to more than $100 billion. The Tory government sold Highway 407 for $3.1 billion dollars. The sale of the electronic toll road at the time was being called the biggest privatization deal ever made in North America!
There are several problems with this deal:
-The consortium’s private owners of the 407 are exempt from paying property taxes on the highway.
-There was a secret contract that was carried out without public awareness or consultation and included the 99-year lease term.
-The deal allowed for provisions in the contract giving the private consortium the ability to charge any toll price based on the amount of traffic. More traffic meant higher tolls.
– Short-term priorities drove the privatizing of the 407, instead of thinking about the long-term effect on our grandchildren’s future!
The conditions of the 99-year lease included confidentiality (or secret arrangements), and anti-competition clauses. For example, for the next 82 years, we cannot build a highway that would be in competition with the 407! As a result of the sale and contract being confidential, the public never knew what was being proposed. The agreement lacked any control and accountability mechanisms. It is argued that government contracts, especially of publicly owned corporations, should not remain confidential since they are intended to serve public interests and must hold up to public debate. Never happened with the sale of the 407!
So what was done by Harris is not reversible until 82 years from now. And what really upsets me is that Premier Wynne seems ready to create an even a greater disaster by selling part of Hydro One! Do any of you, especially those that voted for Premier Wynne, remember her at any time in the election mentioning that she was thinking of selling Hydro One? Short of cash (cancelled hydro plants?), she has to get money from somewhere in order to finance all those costly roads and subways she has promised. Now she appears ready to sacrifice one of Ontario’s oldest revenue tools – its Hydro One transmission utility, which pays a good, steady return of approximately $1 billion a year, and which is much sought after by investors!
Do you suppose any new buyers of Hydro One will be looking at anything other than making the most profit possible? Who will be paying for that profit? Will profit override safety? I was at the recent “Keep Hydro Public” meeting at the Jubilee Pavilion and heard the arguments against selling Hydro One. I was so frustrated at the alarming statistics and how Wynne is selling what she does not own! Citizens of all political stripes are very worried! It would be like me going to Premier Wynne’s home with a bunch of “for sale” signs and putting it up for sale, even though I don’t own it.
There will be more on this subject in a future column. In the meantime, I’m grateful to the following site for allowing me to use their statistics on the 407 hijack: http://prudentpress.com/politics/the-highway-407-hijack.