Although he reinvented himself as a kingpin in the nursing home business, former Ontario premier Mike Harris used to be best known for the water contamination fiasco that killed seven people and sickened thousands more in Walkerton, ON.

That tragedy led to a dramatic decline in support for his government and was considered a key reason Harris resigned as premier in 2002.

Not surprisingly, the premiers who’ve followed Harris have steered clear of anything that smacks of weakening government surveillance of Ontario’s water systems.

Shaking off the Walkerton bogeyman, current Ontario Premier Doug Ford is embarking on a plan that will effectively privatize aspects of the province’s water systems, with potential risks to our drinking water.

Ford is well aware of the political danger of being associated with any weakening of public management of water. This explains why he’s going out of his way to deny the label “privatization” applies to the changes in new legislation, which the government insists will keep our water “publicly owned.”

But, as law professor Joel Bakan and economist Jim Stanford noted in a piece in the Star yesterday, the new legislation creates a regime for water and wastewater services........

© rabble