Linda McQuaig's Sunday Column...

...on why I should be ashamed for having voted Liberal last time. Oh well, never again.

Several years ago, a medical team at McMaster University produced a study that seemed to definitively prove privatization is bad for health care. After an extensive study of U.S. hospitals, the McMaster team concluded that private, for-profit hospitals have significantly higher death rates.

One might think that would have encouraged policy-makers here to pause in their rush toward privatization.

But no. Nothing seems able to derail the privatization train.

Its advocates, who are concentrated in the corporate sector, argue that corporations can deliver government services cheaper and better than government.

There's never been any evidence to back this up. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to contradict it, such as that McMaster study.

But lack of evidence has never been an obstacle. Corporate interests have used the media (which they mostly own) and right-wing think-tanks (which they generously fund) to spread their anti-government ideology.

They've also bankrolled political parties and succeeded in getting governments — including Dalton McGuinty's — to embrace privatization.