Keep Our Water Public
The city of Kingston is considering a transfer of our water and wastewater services, managed by Utilities Kingston, to a new municipal service corporation model that will diminish public accountability while potentially leading to the privatization of critical services. A year ago, the city commissioned KMPG, a global advisory firm, to produce the business case for this proposal.
KMPG’s short public report offers no evidence this commercialized utility model would be an improvement in any way compared to Utilities Kingston’s service. KPMG’s report lists five ‘strategic advantages’ of the MSC model. Four of these five are clearly achieved already by Utilities Kingston, including the ability to respond to development timelines, a dedicated board and leadership team, the capacity to implement advanced technologies, and stronger asset management in ways that reinforce public trust and sustainability.
This new corporation would operate on a commercial basis, pursuing private-sector financing and management and instituting a new core objective of ‘efficiency’ above objectives like affordability. This is clearly the language of capital. The advancement of this model could mean service cutoffs, scrapped health and safety standards, and KPI’s that put profit ahead of providing excellent service to Kingstonians. Meanwhile, the report’s financial analysis projects revenues rising faster than operating costs but admits it wont be enough to cover capital expenditures. The solution the city’s world class consultant analysis came up with is to prop up the new corporation with millions of dollars of Utilities Kingston’s core public assets.
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The 2 articulated justifications for this disruptive overhaul do not hold up to scrutiny.
First, the city’s urgency and spam Facebook posts seems to be driven by outdated population growth projections from 2023 that were based on expected sustained high levels of federal immigration and the opening of the Loyalist Township Umicore battery plant, which halted construction in mid 2024 and laid off 260 workers. Community organization Friends of Butternut Creek dedicated a main section of their website to a PSA about these projections, and former city councilor John Clements wrote to council in late august challenging the data and warning that any decision based off them is ‘ill-advised.’
Secondly, a defining goal of this MSC proposal appears to be the ability to enhance the city’s financing capabilities for long-term infrastructure growth. The report explicitly mentions lease arrangements and private partnerships as a vehicle for infastructure financing, a potential blueprint for locking Kingston into long contracts with multinational water companies and a potential pathway to total privatization of our water and wastewater services.
While this sounds dramatic, the writing is already on the wall. Kingston is volunteering for this at the exact moment Queen’s Park is building legal pathways for corporate water governance. In November, Premier Doug Ford’s omnibus legislation Bill 60 enacted the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act, quietly creating a new framework for allowing private companies to run water and wastewater services in smaller municipalities. Ford’s appetite knows no bounds, whether it’s our public healthcare, public schools, public spaces, or most recently our conservation authorities. The organization Keep Water Public, speaking for Ontario Nature, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, CUPE Ontario, and ACORN Ontario, warns “The Ford government has passed legislation that shifts control of Ontario’s local water systems, giving profit-driven companies power over our drinking water. That means higher bills, less safe water, and no control over something that belongs to all of us.”
Utilities Kingston is already an excellent, public multiservice provider with a strong reputation. The burden of proof remains on Council to present a single reason why we should accept the uncertainty and risks of this overhaul.
