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Should Sasktel Be Privatize?

ESSAY II
OUTLINE
I. INTRODUCTION
II. RATIONALE FOR CREATING SASKTEL AND CROWN CORPORATIONS
III. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRIVATIZING SASKTEL
IV. CONCLUSION
Should SaskTel be privatized? (literature on public ownership, privatization, theories on the role of government)

Saskatchewan Telecommunications or SaskTel is a provincial Crown Corporation operating under the authority of The Saskatchewan Telecommunications Act. It is the leading full service communications company in Saskatchewan, providing local, long distance, voice, data, Internet, web-hosting, text and messaging services over a fiber optic-based, fully digital network (http://www.sasktel.com). SaskTel has delivered first-rate telecommunications to the people of Saskatchewan for more than 90 years. Crown Corporations (a form of public ownership, section 6a) like SaskTel, as a form of public ownership (essentially where government either creates a commercial enterprise or takes a business out of private hands and runs it as a state agency), account for a significant proportion of Saskatchewan economic activity. The most common rationales for the existence and use of Crown corporations like SaskTel include the following: market failure/ provision of essential good or service, nation building/ nationalism, efficient and effective delivery method, economic development, public ownership as regulatory tool and commercial investment2. In addition, Crown corporations also provide a window for the private sector and attracting business people to management. In order to understand and make a decision regarding the privatization (the transfer of public assets, operations or activities to private enterprise)of SaskTel or not, we need to study the original rationales for creating Sasktel (a Crown corporation) and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of privatization to the government, business and society as a whole. The rationale for any particular Crown corporation may change, the result of...