Corporatizing Canada: Making Business Out of Public Service

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“Corporatizing Canada is an impressive collection by activist scholars focusing on the commercialization by stealth of the public sector. Its accessible style is well integrated around three dimensions of corporatization that prioritize markets over social relations. A must-read for those interested in the next generation’s approach to engaged political economy.” —Wallace Clement, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Carleton University From schools to hospitals, from utilities to food banks, over the past thirty years corporatization has transformed the public sector in Canada. Economic elites take control of public institutions and use business metrics to evaluate their performance, transforming public programs into corporate revenue streams. Senior managers use corporate methodology to set priorities in social services and create “market-friendly” public sector cultures. Even social activist organizations increasingly look and act like multinational corporations while non-governmental organizations pursue partnerships with the same corporations they ostensibly oppose. Corporatizing Canada critically examines how corporatization has been implemented in different ways across the Canadian public sector and warns us of the threat that neoliberal corporatization poses to democratic decision-making and the public at large. Cover Title Page Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Critical Perspectives on Corporatization Health Care 1: Healthy Profit Private Finance and Public Hospitals 2: Three Waves of Health Care Corporatization in Ontario Hospitals Education 3: The Rise of the Corporate Cashroom Corporatization and the Neoliberal Canadian School 4: Carbon Capital and Corporate Influence Mapping Elite Networks of Corporations, Universities, and Research Institutes 5: International Students as a Market in Canadian Public Education 6: How and Why to Change the Ways We Try to Change the Corporatization of Canada’s Universities Criminal Justice 7: Police Foundations and the Corporatization of Criminal Justice in Canada 8: Do Construction Companies Create Criminal Justice Policy? Reflections on the Nature of Corporate Power in the Canadian State 9: Corporatizing Therapeutic Justice The Case of the Winnipeg Drug Treatment Court Policy-Making 10: Corporatization and Federal-Provincial Relations 11: Corporatizing Urban Policy-Making Management Consultants, Service Reviews, and Municipal Restructuring Civil Society and the Non-Profit Sector 12: Managerialism and Outsourcing: Corporatizing Social Services in Canada’s Non-Profit Sector 13: The Corporatization of Food Charity in Canada Implications for Domestic Hunger, Poverty Reduction, and Public Policy Public Utilities and Resource Governance 14: Pipelines, Regulatory Capture, and Canada’s National Energy Board 15: Murky Waters When Governments Turn Water Management into a Business 16: Learning from Corporatization The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Contributors’ Biographies Notes Index Copyright