From schools to hospitals, from utilities to food banks, over the past thirty years corporatization has transformed the public sector in Canada. Economic elites take control of public institutions and use business metrics to evaluate their performance, transforming public programs into corporate revenue streams.

Senior managers use corporate methodology to set priorities in social services and create “market-friendly” public sector cultures. Even social activist organizations increasingly look and act like multinational corporations while non-governmental organizations pursue partnerships with the same corporations they ostensibly oppose.

Corporatizing Canada critically examines how corporatization has been implemented in different ways across the Canadian public sector and warns us of the threat that neoliberal corporatization poses to democratic decision-making and the public at large.

Jamie Brownlee is the author of Academia, Inc.: How Corporatization is Transforming Canadian Universities (2015, Fernwood) and Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy (2005, Fernwood). He holds a PhD in Sociology and Political Economy from Carleton University. Using information collected through Access to Information requests, his doctoral research examined the influence of corporate power in the sphere of higher education.

Kevin Walby is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press), the co-author of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge), and the co-editor of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (2012, UBC Press) and Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation (2013, Routledge). He is also the Prisoners' Struggles editor for the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Jamie Brownlee's profile page

Chris Hurl is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. His research explores the influence of the private sector in public policymaking and service delivery. He is the co-editor of Corporatizing Canada: Making Business Out of Public Service and Professional Service Firms and Politics in a Global Era. His research has appeared in Environment and Planning, Studies in Political Economy, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Labour/Le Travail and the Journal of Canadian Studies.

Chris Hurl's profile page

Kevin Walby is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He has authored or co-authored articles in British Journal of Criminology, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research, Punishment & Society, Antipode, Policing and Society, Urban Studies, Surveillance and Society, Media, Culture, and Society, Sociology, Current Sociology, International Sociology, Social Movement Studies, and more. He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press). He is co-editor of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada with M. Larsen (2012, UBC Press). He is co-author with R. Lippert of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge). He has co-edited with R. Lippert Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in the 21st Century (2013, Routledge) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (2014, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Access to Information and Social Justice with J. Brownlee (2015, ARP Books) and The Handbook of Prison Tourism with J. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, and J. Piche (2017, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Corporatizing Canada: Making Business Out of Public Service with Jamie Brownlee and Chris Hurl (2018, Between the Lines Press). He is co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Kevin Walby's profile page