Dec 16, 2019 ERO number 019…

Dec 16, 2019
ERO number 019-0913
Proposal to amend the Ontario Regulation 463/16 to extend the current moratorium on new or increasing permits to take groundwater to produce bottled water for 9 months, ending October 1, 2020.

Yes please extend this so you can properly consider the ethics and negative results of allowing companies to extract unbelievable amounts of our water at little cost to them, but with enormous profit.

Water is necessary for life. We don’t know how long the aquifers will have water. You can’t assume there is an unending supply of it. If a water source for a community dries up, it may never come back and they will never again have a supply of water. It is incredibly irresponsible of you to allow this vast amount of water extraction each day.
You need to ban the taking of our water by water bottling companies.
You are in power right now in the government, but it is not your water to give away. It belongs to the people of Ontario. It should not be available for companies to take.

You state, “At $500 per megalitre, it is one of the highest provincial charges for water in Canada. The charge is used to help recover the costs associated with managing groundwater sources that are used by water bottlers.”
Just because it is the highest, doesn’t make it right. Plus you’re only recovering the cost of selling the water to them. You’re not collecting any money for the natural resource itself.

In 1983 the Norwegian government charged oil companies a royalty on oil extracted under their domain. They believed that the extraction of a natural resource should not just benefit the companies. They created a fund, invested the revenue and spent only the real return. The fund is now $1 trillion.

If you unfortunately do allow them to extract water (and I really wish you would ban this practice), then the amount that you allow them to extract should be vastly reduced. Again, you don’t know when the acquires will dry up.
As well, the taking of our water should cost them a very large % of their profit.
So please, if you insist on allowing them to take OUR water, please charge them an enormous fee, because they certainly make an enormous amount of profit from merely extracting water, then selling it around the world.
Thank you.