There’s no shortage of skepticism in St. Albert, Alta., about the city’s latest garbage collection scheme, especially since residents are still getting used to the last round of changes to the way they get rid of their refuse.
St. Albertans are shaking their heads wondering how an automated process apparently designed for California’s climate is going to work in a place where snow banks are still higher than a car in mid-March, and roads are barely the width of a country lane for half the year. Will we all have to stay home on garbage day?
But sure as morning follows night, legitimate unhappiness with the way council and the administration are approaching the garbage problem sparks a call for contracting out garbage collection to private companies.
This time the voice suggesting this change is that of Councillor Cam MacKay, the candidate backed most enthusiastically by ever-noisy St. Albert Taxpayers’ Association, a group with fewer than 50 members.
Well, here are two things you can count on if you think contracting out garbage collection is the answer to your unhappiness with how things work now:
1) You won’t save any money from private garbage collection
2) You won’t be any happier with private service
Really, do you think private companies are motivated by charity?
Advocates for contracting out inevitably rely on “fuzzy math” to justify their privatization pipedreams, which are based more on ideological faith in the private sector than actually doing the arithmetic. They consistently fail to back up their claims with valid numbers.
The evidence suggests contracting out only saves money in villages and towns smaller than 20,000. Experience shows economies of scale enjoyed by larger municipalities and the fact governments don’t have to build in corporate profit mean public services almost always cost less.
The whole idea that the private sector delivers more for less is based on the notion competition drives prices down. Alas, when you contract out municipal garbage collection in a community the size of St. Albert, population 60,000, all you’re doing is replacing a public monopoly with a private one.
Private companies have a bad history of bidding low to win the job, then raising prices when they get it. When this happens, savings are illusory.
One thing you can count on with contracting out, however, is that while you won’t save money, what you spend won’t remain in your own community in the form of decent salaries paid to your neighbours. Instead, it’ll end up feathering far-away corporate nests — often in another province or country.
Indeed, since private companies can’t duplicate the advantages of scale or technology enjoyed by municipalities, their only edge is that they can cut labour costs. Unfortunately, the social costs of unemployment and marginalizing working people stays at home and comes out of your taxes. But the human costs of privatization are never counted by groups like the taxpayers’ association — at least until it’s too late.
Illusory savings are part of why cities all over Canada and the U.S. that contracted out garbage collection are bringing it back into the public sector. According to the Toronto Star, a recently released auditor’s report shows savings from having Canadian Union of Public Employees members pick up the garbage in Ottawa’s urban core will amount to $4.8 million over four years.
The cost of garbage pickup in Toronto-area cities with privatized collection ranges from 20 to 133 per cent more than in Toronto itself, which has public collection.
But the main justification for going public again, according to the Star, is that once they get it ratepayers hate private garbage collection. The reason: service stinks.
That’s why Port Moody, B.C., for example, switched back to public garbage collection in 2008 after a failed 10-year privatization experiment. The city had to send public crews to follow the private trucks and clean up the mess they left on the streets!
Whatever’s wrong with garbage collection in St. Albert, contracting it out won’t fix it.
This post originally appeared as David Climenhaga’s column in yesterday’s edition of the Saint City News, a weekly newspaper in St. Albert, Alberta. It is also posted on his blog, Alberta Diary.
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