MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
March 10, 2010

Council of Canadians marks 25 years of acting for social justice

Ottawa - Twenty five years ago tomorrow, a news release was issued announcing the formation of The Council of Canadians, which has since grown into Canada’s largest member-based social justice organization.

Over the years, the Council of Canadians has led the campaigns that defeated the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, successfully fought the mergers of Canada’s big banks, helped block the introduction of bovine growth hormone in Canada, won bottled water bans in over 60 communities and, most recently, helped to protect the Alliston Aquifer from contamination.

“Over the past 25 years, it’s become plain for all to see what economic globalization and the tyranny of unregulated markets has done to people and the planet,” says Council of Canadians national chairperson and co-founder Maude Barlow. “Our world is not for sale. To protect it from this unbridled corporate assault, we need a more balanced economy, based on local production, and the protection of land and water.”

Founding members of the Council included Maude Barlow, Mel Hurtig, Marion Dewar, Pierre Berton, Gerry Caplan, Stephen Clarkson, Sheila Copps, Tommy Douglas, Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, Peter C. Newman, David Suzuki, and Margaret Atwood.

The Council of Canadians is quoted or referenced in the media an average of 5 times a day somewhere in Canada or around the world. The Council of Canadians has over 70 chapters in communities across the country, with new ones becoming active every year. Working in coalition with other groups – workers, social and environmental justice groups, culture advocates, and indigenous peoples, the Council of Canadians continues to fight for a just economy and social security here in Canada and around the world.

In this anniversary year, the Council of Canadians is ramping up its campaigns for fair trade, water justice, safeguarding public health care, and climate justice, particularly in the lead up to the G8 and G20 Summits in June. In 2010, the organization will be directly involved in the upcoming major international climate justice summit in Bolivia, campaigning locally for a national water policy and globally for the international recognition of the right to water, and campaigning against the Canada-EU free trade agreement.

“Over the next 25 weeks, months and years, I know that the Council of Canadians will be front and centre in the growing movement for system change,” adds Barlow. The Council of Canadians will be holding its 25th anniversary Annual General Meeting in Ottawa on October 22-24.

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For More Information:

Dylan Penner, Media Officer, Council of Canadians, 613-795-8685, .