I am not a supporter of contracting out. The past experience when companies have bid on jobs against CUPE staff is that we had better results when the work was done internally. The City of Kamloops should be developing internal capacity wherever possible with good paying jobs. In fact, from time to time there have been budget requests to hire on more staff, for example carpenters and electricians, and the math has shown that it would save money. While Council doesn't directly decide these matters, any time a budget issue comes up we can enquire whether the work will be done internally or externally.

We pay a premium to temporarily hire others and due to a desire to maximize profit those companies may be paying their workers less or cutting corners on health and safety. One concrete example of advocacy I've been doing in this area is wanting to remove the for-profit Ohio based company that is running our transit system by having BC Transit operate the system directly, as they do in Victoria.

P3s, in my view, have been used mainly to undercut existing contracts and weaken union workplaces. In rare circumstances like for highly specialized project work where it doesn't make sense to maintain those capacities within the public sector or where governments are genuinely partnering in an area of private industry expertise, these may be appropriate. In that case, when choosing partners governments should use their influence and evaluate bids based on raising, not lowering, standards.