When Doug Ford’s government declared Ontario was “Open for Business,” it wasn’t kidding. Last week, the Progressive Conservatives shared news that they’d be taking this governing approach to its logical conclusion, shutting down at least 11 ServiceOntario locations and relocating them to kiosks at Staples and Walmart.
The relocations include sweetheart deals for both American retail chains. Richard Southern and John Marchesan have been all over this story for CityNews, doing excellent work documenting the move. As they reported on January 11, Staples received a sole-source deal — good work if you can get it — the details of which are scant. Walmart got its own bargain, which, as with Staples, includes public money to retrofit stores for the kiosks.
In the case of the Staples deal, however, the retail giant will own and run the locations — and it’s already openly talking about plans to “monetize” the traffic. How pleasant. Now you can pop on over to the office-supply store and get some pricey toner while you renew your health card. Maybe some overpriced K-Cups, too. I mean, who doesn’t want to be upsold while getting a marriage licence?
Ontario is already home to privately run ServiceOntario locations. The “pilot project” that’s opened government doors to Staples and Walmart is designed to cut government costs and size — which is to say, to further privatize state services. It’s a classic conservative play, but its vintage doesn’t detract from how insidious it is.
The government would likely say that the logic of the Staples/Walmart deals is simple. We need to streamline service delivery and secure cost-effective services for our customers. We need to save money, meet people where they are. People, you’ll notice, are customers. Not residents — customers. It’s new public management with a hedge-fund smile and foreign headquarters.
New Democratic Party MPP and finance and Treasury Board critic Catherine Fife says the move “is not an expansion of service, but another attempt for Ford to quietly hand over more of our public services to private corporations.” Ding, ding, ding.
The further privatization of service delivery is wrong on its face and a potential threat to vulnerable people. It is good to make ServiceOntario access more convenient. It is good to meet people where they are. But giving public cash to corporate giants that’ll rush to relieve seniors and others of their meagre savings while they’re simply trying to renew a health card is not service provision. If anything, the move turns residents into the ones providing a service: profit generation.
There’s a big difference between the government opening and running a service kiosk in a mall or near a shopping centre and letting private corporations staff and run these things in-house. The former is about convenience and serving the interests of residents and employees; the latter is about monetizing every last little bit of life until people are nothing but consumer data and profit — a means to a corporate end — while eroding the public service and the stable jobs that come with that.
As John Michael McGrath argues in these pages, there isn’t even a guarantee that the quality of service will be any better than what we have now. It may, indeed, be worse.
I suppose one might ask themselves what they should expect when marrying the joy of a trip to ServiceOntario with the service they get from Staples and conclude it would have been better to set up the new kiosks inside dental offices. Birth certificate and a root canal. A nice little Tuesday.
The Ford government says the Staples and Walmart deals are mere extensions of existing service points, which you can find at Canadian Tire or Home Hardware. To the extent that’s true, it’s part of the problem. The logic of service privatization is deeply held by the centre and the right and getting deeper. But the leap to funding foreign retail giants with public money to use residents as profit units is decidedly anti-public-spirited beyond what Ontarians have had to manage so far, and we can expect more of the same.
The separation of state functions and the private market is meant to divide individuals as public beings with a right to access a government service as a service from individuals as customers who drive profits. Tearing down that wall — or further tearing it down — collapses the distinction between residents as residents and residents as consumers. In the public realm, government is meant to exist to serve people; in the market, people exist to serve companies for profit. As public space shrinks, we need to protect it from the logic and ends of the market, not further shrink it.
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