Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦

Sociology, U of Manitoba, Canada | Care, gender, family policy, childcare, intersectionality, reconciliation. 🇨🇦

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Good news: The Quebec courts made the right decision here – and it will be important for Ottawa to respect the ruling and to quickly update eligibility parameters to ensure Employment Insurance works more equitably for women and new parents. https://t.co/u8iXyrCaCb

[Frank Graves @VoiceOfFranky]

50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says https://t.co/IG8R3cza7w via @cbsmoneywatch

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Important insights for Canada on childcare:

[Sharon Gregson @sharongregson]

Why provinces must meet the call of the federal daycare funding boost #ChildCareBC #10adaychildcare https://t.co/nUehWNO048 via @thespec

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

Studies now present a striking picture of what happens when private equity firms acquire hospitals and nursing homes: predictable increases in harm and deaths. One landmark study shows: patient deaths up about 11% after such acquisitions.

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Troubling news out of Australia about the harms caused for for-profit childcare firms. These equity firms are effectively real estate developers whose investment priorities are maximizing revenues - and thus quality suffers.https://t.co/IshKNifWOm

[Child Care Now Saskatchewan @CCNowSask]

Looking for answers about the new SK child care agreement? So are we! We're posting our most burning questions for Minister Hindley here the next few weeks, for you to share and ask him (or your MLA) as well!

Find the full list of questions on our website (link in bio)

#skpoli

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Smart analysis of why New York will make childcare free even for residents in affluent neighbourhoods - it comes down to the logic that 'targeted programs make easy targets.' https://t.co/vFTKOrSCmw

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Important cautions here for those who propose public, private partnerships, and similar financing arrangements.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

This one will require a stiff drink.

In the early 1990s, the government came up with a clever idea. Instead of borrowing money cheaply to build hospitals, schools, and roads, it would get the private sector to build them and then pay the private sector back over 25 to 30 years. The Private Finance Initiative. PFI.

The attraction was obvious. You got a shiny new hospital today. The bill didn't show up on the government's books. The cost was deferred into the future. Politicians got ribbon-cutting ceremonies without the awkward conversation about borrowing.

It was, in effect, the nation's credit card. Buy now, pay later. Except the interest rate was extraordinary.

The total capital value of everything built under PFI was around £50 billion. As of March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts still running across the UK, with roughly £136 billion in remaining payments stretching out to the early 2050s. These are payments public bodies are contractually locked into. Hospitals, schools, councils, government departments. Paying for buildings that in many cases were constructed twenty or thirty years ago.

And the terms are extraordinary.

PFI contracts were structured so the private sector would not just build the facility but manage its services. Cleaning. Maintenance. Catering. Portering. These services are bundled into long-term contracts with built-in inflation increases that the public sector cannot renegotiate, cannot exit without paying massive penalties, and often cannot even fully scrutinise because of commercial confidentiality clauses.

In one case raised in Parliament, a hospital was charged £333 to change a lightbulb. That isn't an urban myth. It was cited in Hansard.

The NHS has been hit hardest.

According to parliamentary analysis, the capital cost of NHS PFI projects was around £13 billion. The total repayments are estimated at around £80 billion. And the peak of NHS PFI annual repayments isn't even here yet. It arrives in 2029. The bills are still going up.

In 2020-21, NHS trusts paid £457 million purely in interest charges on PFI contracts. Not services. Not maintenance. Interest. In the last five years, NHS trusts have handed over more than £1.8 billion in PFI interest alone. We Own It calculates that money would have covered the starting salaries of over 50,000 new doctors.

One NHS trust, Essex Partnership, has reportedly paid back 27 times what was originally borrowed. Some hospitals are spending more on PFI repayments than on medicines for patients. And remember, these repayments come out of the same NHS budget that's supposed to fund patient care, staff, and equipment.

Scotland got it just as badly. Audit Scotland reported that Scottish taxpayers will pay a cumulative £40 billion for PFI assets worth just £9 billion. North Ayrshire Council will have paid £440 million by 2038 for four schools that cost £83 million to build.

Now here's what makes this worse.

Many of these contracts are starting to expire. The buildings are being handed back to the public sector. And the NAO has warned of significant risks around the handback process, including cases where public bodies were dissatisfied with the condition of assets being returned to them. Decades of payments. And some of these buildings may come back needing significant further investment.

So what actually happened?

The government could have borrowed money at significantly lower rates to build these hospitals and schools itself. Sovereign borrowing has always been cheaper than private finance. Instead, it paid the private sector to borrow at a premium and passed the inflated cost on to the taxpayer. The private sector took the profit. The taxpayer took the risk. The buildings are now ageing. The debts are still being paid. And the services that were supposed to benefit are being squeezed partly because so much of their budget is locked into contractual obligations they cannot escape.

PFI wasn't investment. It was an accounting trick. A way for governments to build things without the borrowing showing up in the national debt figures. It made politicians look fiscally responsible while loading future generations with obligations they had no say in and no ability to renegotiate.

Both parties did this. The Conservatives created PFI in 1992. Labour massively expanded it after 1997. More than 700 projects were signed. The coalition eventually wound it down. The current government scrapped the latest version. But the contracts remain. The payments continue. And the damage is already done.

This is what it looks like when a country chooses to buy its infrastructure on hire purchase instead of investing properly. You lock in above-market rates for decades. You lose control of the assets. You tie the hands of future governments. And when the bill keeps coming due, you're told there's no money for doctors, teachers, or social care.

There was always money. It just went somewhere else.

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

The facts suggest two interpretive frameworks for Iran: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the U.S.
Join my live conversation with @PhillipsPOBrien, 12:00pm ET, via link in profile

[António Guterres @antonioguterres]

I condemn today’s military escalation in the Middle East. The use of force by the United States & Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace & security.

All Member States must respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the @UN. The Charter clearly prohibits “the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

I call for an immediate cessation of hostilities & de-escalation. Failing to do so risks a wider regional conflict with grave consequences for civilians & regional stability. I strongly encourage all parties to return immediately to the negotiating table.

I reiterate that there is no viable alternative to the peaceful settlement of international disputes, in full accordance with international law, including the UN Charter. The Charter provides the foundation for the maintenance of international peace and security.

[MarthaFriendly @_MFriendly]

Terrific @Child_Care_Now press conference today lays out important decisions happening right now in #cdnchildcare. Watch https://t.co/AFkdriwsuS

[Simon Black @_SimonBlack]

Today, New York took a big step toward universal childcare.

As I wrote in @ConversationUS, Zohran’s Mamdani’s universal child care plan, with decent pay for child care staff, could transform the politics and the reality of child care in NYC and beyond.
https://t.co/k6uT3GGx2o

[Katherine Scott @kjscott.bsky.social @ScottKatherineJ]

The economy is built not just on roads & ports, but on paid & unpaid care for each other. AFB 2026 makes the investments necessary to strengthen our physical & social infrastructure. Gender equality is key to this goal. Read our rec's for #budget2025: https://t.co/UC1se2XT93

[Sean Carleton @SeanCarleton]

New piece for @CDN_Dimension talking about the far-right strategy to undermine truth and reconciliation: “flooding the zone” with residential school denialism: https://t.co/ISvGNtWnsb

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Most Canadians support publicly funded child care, YMCA and YWCA survey says https://t.co/woVPZmoPHa

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Private surgeries don’t resolve wait times | Calgary Herald https://t.co/MSqjvb9oon

[Childcare Resource and Research Unit @childcarepolicy]

@susanprentice #cdnchildcare https://t.co/1XvxcjcBAa

[Evan Dyer @EvanDyerCBC]

Trump blows up the notion his Canada talk was just a fleeting fancy
https://t.co/cZ6hbpF3hl

[Susan Prentice PhD🇨🇦 @susanprentice]

Canadians bombarded with rightwing content on Musk’s X ahead of election https://t.co/zZgIrevqkZ

[Childcare Resource and Research Unit @childcarepolicy]

Another analysis of party platforms on #cdnchildcare, this from CCPA - See https://t.co/CrbXLDIQmj, scroll to Where do the parties stand on child care? @policyalternatives @CCCF_FCSGE @Child_Care_Now @ChildCareON