As a citizen of Ontario I…

As a citizen of Ontario I find it appalling that this proposal is even being considered for renewal. There is no valid counterargument to the social costs that come with unethically consuming an essential natural resource and producing millions of plastic water bottles yearly. There appears to be a slippery slope here, who decides how much water belongs to corporations, can the legislators making these decisions be bought by larger entities to ensure profits?

Suppose we look at the counterargument where we shift blame from these corporate interests to the consumer of these products. Of course there wouldn't be an industry for plastic water bottles if there were no consumers, however, just because there are consumers does not mean that we should remove all costs associated with this immoral business. By that logic, we should remove all legal barriers to all markets, including narcotics and human trafficking. Considering the negative impact associated with this industry, we should definitely impose greater barriers to profit margins, even if we can't outlaw the selling of water bottles outright.

Another counterargument is this notion of corporations as people, which I believe is fundamentally wrong in this case and many others. There is lack of alignment between a guardian with several children and a corporation whose sole objective is profit and shareholders' equity. You would have to ignore several studies such as "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior" by Piff et al. which demonstrate that empathy decreases as wealth increases. How can we as a populace accept this notion that these corporations are just like any other citizen?

It is moments like these where a populace should be able to correct for the imbalance in corporate and public interest for the public good. Of course these aren't necessarily opposing forces, but this moratorium speaks to a bias in terms of the former rather than the later.