While she makes some good points about contracting out many of the services that the city relies on in it ' s pursuit of customerresident satisfaction , contracting out labour is not at all the same thing as privatization . Privatization means that the ownership of a business is in the hands of a private third party . Contracting out fleet maintenance ? OK , but only if it ' s feasible how many mechanics and shops are equipped to work on the city ' s current fleet ? And what of the giant facility that is just about finished construction of which a lot of money was spent to make maintenance much more efficient ? As for letting the private sector take complete ownership of school and university transit service and BRT routes . heck no ! 1 that is likely where the bulk of all transit revenue comes from and will continue to come from , and that profitability is probably used to subsidize the less frequently used routes , so what kind of transit service would actually remain if we lost all that revenue ? Who would actually pay much more to receive worse level of service ? 2 what guarantees are there that the private sector workforce wouldn ' t form a union and threaten strike notice ? Contracts can only go so far and no private business is going to take financial risks unless there is significant profit , so 3 with a profit driven service just how much more would we expect transit fees to increase ? Are there actually any private companies that would be willing to service routes that lose money , and if not do those citizens just suck it up and accept that transit is no longer an option for them ?