Make a Splash for Public Water on World Water Day March 22 is World Water Day, and to mark this day Council of Canadians chapters and allies are organizing activities across the country to promote water as a public resource and a human right. This year, the Council of Canadians is actively involved in battles against lakes being turned into dump sites for mining waste, the privatization of water services in Canada and around the world, the commodification of water through water markets and bottled water, and industrial abuses of water resources including the massive use and contamination that occurs in the tar sands. We are fighting for a National Water Policy that recognizes water as a human right and a public trust. There are many ways you can get involved in your community and help mark the importance of clean, public water for everyone. Setting up a Water Watch Committee, helping to get a bottled water ban, screening a water documentary or talking to your elected representatives about the urgent need for a National Water Policy are just a few ideas of how you can take action. Go here for a full list of ideas. Want to show your support for publicly-owned and delivered water? Click here to take our Tap Water Pledge.

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Here’s more about what’s new at the Council of Canadians:

• Community steps up fight to protect Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) from toxic mining waste
• Council responds to Harper’s Throne Speech and budget ‘priorities’
• Council to speak at Parliamentary committee hearing on ‘Buy American’ deal
• Acclaimed author and Rabble columnist Murray Dobbin tackles Harper’s record on democracy
• Promoting public power and green jobs in Nova Scotia
• Win! Bute hydro project delayed in British Columbia
• Council preparing to confront the problems of global trade at G8/G20 meetings in June
• Join the Council of Canadians

Community steps up fight to protect Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) from toxic mining waste

Vancouver-based Taseko Mines Ltd. is proposing to drain Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) in British Columbia under “Schedule 2,” a legal loophole in the Fisheries Act that allows mining companies to dump their toxic waste in pristine Canada lakes.

Taseko Mines Ltd. wants to stockpile rock waste and use Fish Creek and Little Fish Lake as tailings impoundment areas for a gold-copper mining project called Prosperity Mine.

The water system, also known as Teztan Biny, is home to an estimated 85,000 rainbow trout. The Tsilhqot’in First Nations people have lived in the area for thousands of years. They oppose the environmental destruction being proposed by Taseko Mines and were not consulted by the B.C. government when it approved the project.

Draining Teztan Biny and dumping toxins in Fish Creek and Little Fish Lake will likely contaminate the Taseko River, a tributary of the Chilko River that joins the Fraser River. The Fraser River has the largest runs of sockeye salmon in the world and is an important source of food security to First Nations groups within the watershed.

Take Action! Sign the on-line petition to defend Teztan Biny at www.protectfishlake.ca/petition.php.

Council responds to Harper’s Throne Speech and budget ‘priorities’

On the eve of the Throne Speech and federal budget, the Council of Canadians urged all Members of Parliament to make water, climate, and trade justice priorities in the next session of Parliament.

We called for a National Water Policy that recognizes water as a human right in domestic law, declares surface and groundwater a public trust, and supports the recognition of water as a human right in international law. For climate justice, we called for a phase out of all subsidies to big oil and carbon capture and storage, significant green infrastructure spending, and implementing a greenhouse gas emission reduction plan of at least 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. As a starting point, we want the immediate passage of private member Bill C-311 (which includes a target of 25 per cent reductions below 1990 levels by 2020.) For fair trade, we called for Parliamentary hearings on the “Buy American” deal and the proposed Canada-EU trade agreement, and a full Human Rights Impact Assessment before any trade deal is signed with Colombia.

The Harper government’s “priorities” in both the Speech From the Throne and the budget show a different agenda. The announcements fixated on a so-called free trade agenda that limits real job creation, further opens our economy to foreign ownership, continues to put our water, energy and public services at risk, and gives undue power to corporations.

While clean, safe water was highlighted as a priority in the Throne Speech, very little money was actually committed in the federal budget to ensure this.

Prime Minister Harper also continued to identify Canada as “an energy superpower” and spoke about exporting energy in an integrated North American energy market.

To read more about our analysis of the Throne Speech and federal budget go here.

To read our chapter on “Water” in the Alternative Federal Budget (pages 113-118), and to note the AFB’s other recommendations, go here.

Council to speak at Parliamentary committee hearing on ‘Buy American’ deal

In March, thanks to public pressure, the NDP secured parliamentary hearings into Harper and International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan’s lopsided “Buy American” deal through the government’s Commons Committee on International Trade (CIIT). Through those hearings, we have learned that the government relied entirely on business and corporate lobby group input to negotiate the Canada-U.S. procurement agreement, and that no cost-benefit analysis of the deal was ever carried out.

Such an analysis would have been mandatory had the government consulted more openly and broadly with Canadians about this new procurement deal, which was signed while Parliament was prorogued last month. But even though the agreement is passed, we must continue to push for openness at the federal and provincial level given recent news that the European Union is requesting, in free trade negotiations with Canada, much deeper access to spending by Canadian provinces, municipalities, Crown corporations, hospitals, school boards, and water and electricity utilities.

Council of Canadians' board member Steven Shrybman will be presenting at the Parliamentary committee hearing next week.

To read more about this go here.

Acclaimed author and Rabble columnist Murray Dobbin tackles Harper’s record on democracy

Author and Rabble.ca columnist Murray Dobbin details the harm Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing to the political and social fabric of Canada in a new essay commissioned by the Council of Canadians titled Harper’s Hitlist: Power, Process and the Assault on Democracy.

As Dobbin explains in the opening paragraphs of the essay, “This study is intended to examine the most serious violations of democracy committed by the prime minister and his government. Some are clearly more serious than others. But taken as a whole they add up to a dangerous undermining of our democratic traditions, institutions and precedents – and politics. These violations are not accidental, they are not incidental, and they are not oversights or simply the sign of an impatient government or ‘decisive’ leadership. They are a fundamental part of Harper’s iron-fisted determination to remake Canada, whether Canadians like it or not.”

Go here to read Dobbin’s analysis about Harper’s master plan to undermine democracy and dismantle the social programs and values Canadians hold dear.

Promoting public power and green jobs in Nova Scotia

The Council’s Energy Campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue headed to the east coast earlier this month at the invitation of the Nova Scotia Environmental Network (NSEN). While there, she met with local activists and environmentalists to talk about the importance of changing from a fossil-fuel based economy to one that focuses on renewable and sustainable sources of energy. She called for the creation of “green jobs,” – jobs that contribute to improving the environment or reducing energy use – in areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The Council of Canadians and NSEN hosted a public forum titled, “A Green Collar Economy: Innovative Ideas for Social Change in Nova Scotia.” The event focused on local opportunities for environmental initiatives and green jobs, highlighting the broad-based and growing movement that rejects pitting jobs and the economy against the environment, instead calling for a low carbon economy with decent green jobs. Andrea spoke about the Council’s recent report, Green, Decent and Public, co-authored with the Canadian Labour Congress.

To read more about Harden-Donahue’s east coast trip go here.

To read Green, Decent and Public go here.

Photo: Andrea Harden-Donahue speaks at a public forum about green jobs.

Win! Bute hydro project delayed in British Columbia

The Council of Canadians, along with community activists, celebrated a major victory in the fight against “run of river” power projects in British Columbia with the announcement that Plutonic Power and GE have delayed a $4 billion hydro project at Bute Inlet.

“Run of river” hydro projects, also known as “independent power projects,” give private companies licences to create dams and divert water in order to create hydro-electricity from hundreds of B.C. rivers. BC Hydro, the province’s power company, then buys the power back from these private companies.

Concerned B.C residents had targeted the Bute Inlet project for its massive and environmentally devastating impact. In a May 2009 opinion editorial in the Georgia Straight newspaper, Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow wrote: “The scale of Plutonic’s proposed development are staggering—17 dammed creeks, 265 kilometres of roads, 428 kilometres of power lines, 100 bridges, and 45,000 hectares of Crown land granted. But with an annual output of 2,980 gigawatt hours, it has been estimated Plutonic may reap as much as $350 million per year. With a 40-year contract, they stand to make $15 billion. In this same area the Integrated Land Management Bureau is considering at least seven applications to bottle water from the Bute watershed.”

Community activists will continue their push to cancel the project entirely. “Saving Bute Inlet from General Electric” events will be held in Victoria and Vancouver on March 30 and April 6 with speakers from the Sierra Club and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. The Council of Canadians is co-sponsoring these events.

For more information about how “run of river” projects are privatizing B.C. rivers, see our Canadian Perspectives article “Taking Back the Power: Opposition to Run of River Projects in B.C. Runs Deep” here.

For more info about the Bute project from Friends of Bute Inlet visit www.buteinlet.net.

Council preparing to confront the problems of global trade at G8/G20 meetings in June

The Council of Canadians will confront the pressures of global capitalism and a failed model of world trade that has led to inaction on climate change, the loss of clean, accessible water and rising corporate power as Canada hosts the G8 and the G20 in Ontario June 25-27.

The G8 and G20 bring together government representatives from wealthy countries of the global North to discuss economic issues. We have been highly critical of the WTO agenda backed by the G8 and G20. Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow has stated, “Economic globalization, led by the rich countries and their corporations, and the notion of unlimited growth behind the WTO is killing the world. Policies and institutions that promote endless growth and trade must end. The only way out of the ecological crisis the world faces is a different way of living, where trade and the economy serve communities, not the other way around. Sustainable trade and economic policies must prevail.” 

The Council of Canadians will be putting the issues of global trade and economic justice in the spotlight Friday, June 25 during a major public forum featuring world-renowned speakers Maude Barlow, Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Amy Goodman and others at Convocation Hall in Toronto. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 26 we will take part in a major family-friendly march against the G20. We will also be participating in workshops and forums at the Peoples Summit taking place in Toronto the weekend of June 18-20.

Go here for regular updates about the G8/G20.

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