Pension Funds and Privatization

Toronto — 15 November 2013.

Pension Funds, Unions, and Working Class Strategies – session 4:

P3s and pension-financed privatization

Nearly all of the largest pension funds in Canada have moved aggressively into financing what they call “infrastructure,” or “alternative asset classes” that include various kinds of public infrastructure that have been either privatized outright (as the UK’s Royal Mail was several weeks ago) or restructured into a “partnership” structure which, critics argue, produces guaranteed (and monopolistic) profits for private owners and managers of infrastructure, with many of the risks still borne by government or public sector entities. These have come to be identified as “public private partnerships” or simply P3s.

What, if anything, should we be doing about this? What are political parties, including the NDP, doing and saying about these developments? How do they relate to the larger dangers of neoliberalism and austerity – and how do we resist them? Click here to view complete outline.

Moderated by Kevin Skerrett. Presentations by:

• Natalie Mehra – Ontario Health Coalition
• Brian O’Keefe – trustee on the Sponsors Board of OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System)

Sponsors: Centre for Social Justice, Global Labour Research Centre (York University), Canada Research Chair in Political Economy (York University) and Socialist Project.