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Canada
Privatization doesn't hold Water
MONTREAL (CUP) - In the last few years, it's become possible to mark time both by international summits, be they the G-8, FTAA, WTO, or a multitude of others and the anti-globalisation protests that have sprung up around the barbed wire fences. Still, many people living in the West have chosen to keep their distance, maybe because it's tough for them to discern a clear cause of the anger that can turn today's calm city streets into tomorrow's battlegrounds.
Bottled water industry is the thin edge of water privatization
The United Church of Canada is urging its three million members across the country to avoid bottled water as a way of taking a personal stand against water privatization.
Conflict muddies new law on water Landowners fear rights trampled
Environmentalists are trying to ensure a vociferous landowners' group doesn't derail a new provincial law aimed at preventing another Walkerton-style drinking water tragedy. The proposed Clean Water Act — the subject of legislature hearings this week — isn't perfect, but "it's a big step forward from what we've had," says Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, one of 16 groups that will officially endorse the new law today. "Protecting our sources of drinking water is pure common sense. This Act ... should be as strong as possible."
Cellucci all wet on water trading
September 19, 2006 They can have our gas, our oil, even our prescription drugs, but Canadians need to draw the line at selling water to the U.S.
United Church calls for ban on bottled water
The United
Church of Canada (UCC) is advising its 590,000 members to stop buying bottled water, and expressing concern at a number of levels around the issue of water consumption.
Hard Water: The Uphill Campaign to Privatize Canada's Waterworks
2/13/2003 - Determined to shed its image as a grimy steel town, this mid-sized city of hard hats and rough necks decided in 1995 to carve itself a niche in a purer, more refined line of work — water. Investment gurus were predicting water would be the boom business of the 21st century. They called water a "commodity" and estimated the potential revenue flow at C$4 trillion. Hamilton councilors thought the city could get in at the ground level by creating an international private water utility busines...
Coalition urges province to impose fees for water
A coalition of environmental and citizen groups, including the Urban League of London, is demanding Ontario impose fees for water-taking as part of an overhaul of water protection legislation. The groups say fees will give municipalities and conservation authorities the ability to police the new Drinking Water Source Protection Act
Hard Water: The Uphill Campaign to Privatize Canada's Waterworks
Hamilton was the first privatized large water utility in Canada, a country
where
waterworks have been overwhelmingly a public affair – and where most people
like it that way. The Hamilton experience was supposed to demonstrate an alternative,
free market model, supposed to change public opinion. It has. But not as expected.
The
Council of Canadians
Water is a public trust; it belongs to everyone. No one should have the right
to appropriate it or profit from it at someone else's expense. Yet that's what
corporations and investors want to do. And they see Canada's freshwater lakes,
rivers and aquifers as a rich reservoir to tap. In early 1999, the Council
launched its campaign to ban the bulk export of Canadian water and head off
what it sees as the gradual commodification and privatization of this priceless,
public resource.
The
coming water wars
Canada will come under increasing pressure to sell water to the U.S., with
potentially serious environmental consequences, said McGill experts at a recent
Macdonald Campus conference titled "Water: Gift, Commodity or International
Weapon."
International
Conference Mirrors Local Struggles to Protect Water from
Profiteers
Blueplanet
Project
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