Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act

Schedule 16 enacts entirely new legislation—the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act, 2025—authorizing the Minister to designate corporations incorporated under the Business Corporations Act as "water and wastewater public corporations" to provide water and sewage services on behalf of municipalities.

This creates the legislative framework for water privatization. While the government claims these will be "public" corporations, the structure enables private investment and profit extraction from essential water services. The Act authorizes corporations to issue shares, collect fees, impose charges, and operate under a rate plan system controlled by the Minister rather than democratically-elected municipal councils.​​

Privatized and semi-privatized water systems worldwide demonstrate consistent patterns: rate increases to generate investor returns, infrastructure neglect to minimize costs, service quality decline, job losses through contracting out, and loss of democratic accountability. Once water systems transfer to corporate structures, bringing them back under full public control becomes extraordinarily difficult and expensive.

Water is essential to life and cannot be treated as a commodity for profit extraction. When water systems operate under corporate structures prioritizing shareholder returns, service quality declines while rates increase. Infrastructure maintenance gets deferred to boost short-term profits. Workers' jobs are contracted out to low-wage employers. And critically, democratic accountability disappears—residents cannot vote out corporate executives making decisions about essential services

Taking over Peel

Schedule 7 amends the Municipal Act, 2001 to transfer jurisdiction over water and sewage public utilities from the Regional Municipality of Peel to the three lower-tier municipalities (Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon), setting the stage for the public corporation takeover.

Peel Region's integrated water system achieves economies of scale, coordinates infrastructure investment across three municipalities, and delivers exceptional service at low cost. Breaking up this integrated system creates three separate entities, each with duplicated administrative costs, reduced purchasing power, and fragmented planning.​

This fragmentation serves no public interest—residents will pay more for worse service. The real purpose is enabling the corporate takeover under Schedule 16. An integrated regional system with unified democratic oversight is harder to privatize than fragmented municipal systems.​

CUPE 966 President Salil Arya, representing municipal workers in Peel, testified: "Important decisions that will affect Peel residents and our members like the privatization of public services are being made in the dark without transparency or public knowledge and it's unacceptable".​

Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon residents losing integrated regional water service that provides economy of scale, municipal employees (particularly CUPE members) facing job losses, wage cuts, and deteriorating working conditions through privatization, communities dependent on coordinated water infrastructure planning across municipal boundaries, ratepayers facing higher costs from fragmented system.

Peel Region's water system works exceptionally well. Residents enjoy award-winning service and Canada's lowest water bills precisely because of integrated regional governance and public sector operation. There is no legitimate public policy reason to dismantle a successful system—unless the goal is facilitating privatization that would be more difficult under unified regional control.

Ministry taking over your water rates

Schedule 16 grants the Minister authority to require water corporations to amend and resubmit rate plans, to approve or refuse rate plans submitted by corporations. If the Minister refuses approval, the Lieutenant Governor in Council (Cabinet) may make regulations governing the rates to be established.

This removes democratic accountability for water rate-setting. Currently, elected municipal councils set water rates through transparent public processes where residents can participate, question decisions, and hold politicians accountable at the ballot box. Under Bill 60, unelected Ministers and Cabinet control rates through closed-door regulatory processes.

Democratic accountability for essential services is fundamental. When elected officials set rates, residents can organize, advocate, and vote out governments that impose unaffordable increases. When unelected Ministers and Cabinet control rates through regulations, residents have no recourse. This eliminates political accountability, enabling rate increases that serve financial engineering rather than public interest.​

The framing that water corporations need provincial rate control to borrow capital reveals the deeper agenda: transforming water from a public service into a financial asset. Infrastructure borrowing becomes the justification for rate increases disconnected from actual service costs—a model that benefits financial institutions and corporate structures, not residents.