One-third of Canada's…

One-third of Canada's population depend on groundwater (Statistics Canada); in Ontario, the proportion is over 45%. It is thus an extremely important resource. However, in recent decades Canadian ground-water has begun to see shortages, especially in drought years, and serious contamination from a variety of sources: landfill, industrial waste, leaking gas storage tanks and septic tanks, and the widespread use of fertilisers and pesticides in farming. But these are not the only threats to Canadians' essential drinking water.

Companies, some of them foreign, are enabled by the Ontarian government to extract huge quantities of high-quality groundwater for bottling, paying little or nothing for the privilege. Many indigenous Canadians, including those on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario, do not have access to fresh running water in their homes (Guardian Oct. 4, 2018), despite Justin Trudeau's 2016 promise to eliminate boil-water advisories on reserves. And in 2016 Nestlé, which was already taking up to 3.6 million litres of water a day for bottling at its site in Aberfoyle, bought a significant well from Middlebrook Water Company against competition from the local community (Globe & Mail, Sept.22, 2016).

It is an outrage that precious Canadian resources should be given away to multinationals against the interests of our citizens, and prompts one to wonder why our politicians have permitted such robbery in plain sight. Water is becoming more valuable, and may soon exceed gasoline in value as climate changes. Canada's resources must be cared for and, if sold, should be to the highest bidder, and only then if national and local needs are satisfied.

Please extend the current moratorium on water bottling permits so that Ontario's water resources can be protected from extraction by companies that care nothing for the interests of Canadians.