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Currently viewing articles tagged with Water.
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No Running Water
116 First Nations across Canada – almost one in five – have running water that is not drinkable because of contamination. It’s a horrendous situation putting residents at increased risk for a host of health problems usually associated with the world’s poorest countries.
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Communities, Not Corporations
The vast majority of water and wastewater systems in Canada are owned, operated and maintained within the public sector. Essential to our public health system, municipal water systems were one of the first major services to be publicly delivered in Canada. The reason why water infrastructure is overwhelmingly public is because the private sector could not be relied upon to deliver a quality service at a price that all residents could afford. It’s therefore ironic that water corporations from rich countries like our own are now trying to persuade developing countries not to develop water resources publicly but to experiment with the private sector instead. What’s more, the belief that the private sector can manage our public water resources is now gaining ground in Canadian government and policy circles.
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Turning on Canada’s Tap
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with President George W. Bush in their first White House meeting on July 6, one of the “unmentionable” items on their agenda may well have been the question of bulk water exports from Canada. After all, Bush himself raised the issue back in July, 2001, when he talked “off the cuff” to reporters about growing water shortages in his home state of Texas and elsewhere in the country, saying he would like to begin negotiations with Ottawa on water exports from Canada. In Texas, he said, “water is more valuable than oil.” “A lot of people don’t need it, but when you head south and west, we need it,” Bush declared, adding that he “looked forward” to discussing the matter with then-prime minister Jean Chretien.
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The Council of Canadians at 20
In March, 2005, the Council of Canadians will celebrate its twentieth anniversary. To mark the occasion, Canadian Dimension has chosen the Council as its Pathbreaker Towards a New Society.
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