The Shock Doctrine of Carney’s “Maple-Washed” Privatizations
by Keith Porteous (editorial)
We’ve seen this movie before, but this one’s more like a terrible sequel or a cheap remake. Endless wars, energy crises, low wages, high inflation, a deeply unpopular right wing Republican President, and a Canadian Prime Minister who is on a desperate Tinder date with global capital. Then comes the voodoo of trickle down economics, privatizations and austerity, promising everything will be better and all ships will be raised in the rising capitalist tide, if we create the favourable conditions for “investment” and record profits.
New leader Avi Lewis is returning the NDP to its roots of economic populism and policies to support working people and families in a rigged economy and cost of living crisis. He says “Privatizing Canada’s airports would be a disastrous deal for travellers, workers and the public purse. Prime Minister Carney is opening some of Canada’s largest, most important airports to private investors. Canadians should be asking a simple question: why would we hand a natural monopoly to investors whose only job is to maximize profits?
Around the world, privatization has led to higher travel costs, fewer jobs and worse working conditions. In Australia, the Sydney Airport cut 40 per cent of its workforce as soon as employment protections expired. In New Zealand, regulators found the Auckland Airport was on track to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in excess profits while travellers had nowhere else to go. In the UK, the government sold off its airports only to watch private owners capture enormous profits from those public assets for decades.
Canadian airports already support hundreds of thousands of jobs, yet workers are already dealing with contract-flipping, insecure employment and staffing shortages. Handing these critical services to profit-driven owners would put even more pressure on working conditions and safety. The alternative to privatizing our airports is very simple: don’t do it.”
Labor organizations point out that private models increase pressure to generate investor returns, leading to a higher use of outsourcing, suppressed wages, and staffing reductions. Private owners require higher profit margins (often 15% to 20% more revenue), which translate into higher user fees and increased ticket costs for travellers. Airlines face higher operational costs, such as increased runway and landing fees, because private operators use their monopoly of pricing power to boost net operating income.
It’s a cruel irony that the Chrétien Liberals campaigned against free trade in 1993 and soundly defeated the pro “free trade” Conservatives. Of course, as is the Liberal playbook, upon being elected to a majority, Chrétien ratified the free trade deal. Now that those chickens have come home to roost as a result of Trumpism, the Carney led Liberal government has chosen to privatize public infrastructure like airports, and sell off Canadian resources to American interests and others, in the name of “economic independence and sovereignty.” This Liberal policy agenda is something the Conservatives could only have dreamed of.
It’s a brand of cognitive dissonance not acknowledged since the publication of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”, where the current global shocks of Trumpism, NATO warmongering, and a cost of living crisis, are leveraged to serve global capitalists, lowering their taxes, removing environmental and indigenous review and consent, and accelerating the fossil fuel driven climate crisis. Carney has massively increased military spending while pushing full steam ahead on dangerous Ai and water and energy hungry data centres, with sweetheart deals for global corporatists and austerity for the rest of us.
This is the irony of “Canada Strong.” Elbows Up? More like pulling the goalie!
