As we all know, ground water…

As we all know, ground water is a pubic resource. Ontarians rely on a stable and pure source of water for our survival. Due to the increased demand on our water supply from increased population and the recently established drought seasons in Southern Ontario from climate change, under no uncertain terms does it make rational sense to allow transnational corporations to put our public resources at risk.

Nestlé, for example, has continued extracting water from acquifers in drought conditions, while local residents were forced to buy water from companies like Nestlé to meet their survival needs while Nestlé continued to profit by sucking the public resources dry.

For the cost of these permits to simply be $500 for a million litres is laughable as we all know water bottling companies charge upwards of $2 for half a litre of bottled water thus creating multi-millions of dollars in profit yearly from our public resource.

This is illogical and irrational.

Human rights must come before the muilti-million dollar profits of foreign and domestic corporations. We cannot allow the civility of human dignity to be transgressed by limitless corporate greed.

People and human rights must be valued over eternally thirsty corporations. This is 2019, almost 2020, we have to get our priorities straight.

While I am thankful to see this proposal as well as the moratorium on *expanding* the number of water bottling permits, I am disheartened to see that current permits will be able to be renewed which flies in the face of what the original moratorium was designed for.

Water bottling contracts should not be able to operate the way they have. The infinite greed of these water bottling corporations should not be valued more strongly than the needs of every Ontarian by allowing these permits to be renewed.

Ontarians are suffering from these corporate contracts and your job as a government “for the people” is to protect the people before profits. If the Conservative government wants to be “open for business” perhaps they should invest in renewable energy and markets that will ensure Ontarians are better off, not worse. Contracts they should not renew are these of greedy corporations essentially robbing our needed resource while cancelling renewable energy contracts costing $231 million...

The priorities of the Conservative party appear to be glaringly backwards. Please use evidence-based practices when determining the future of these draconian water bottling contracts.

Please take this perspective to heart and show us that the Conservative Party can do
what is best for Ontarians, which is to put their human rights before that of greedy transnational corporations.

I’ll attach a few links regarding the trouble we all know Ontarians have already been facing as their resources run dry and water bottling companies continue to make a profit. It is also very troubling to see that permits are granted by municipalities to allow these water bottling companies to privatize a public resource.

These are very dangerous precedents to continue operating under and the Ontario government must work to end these contracts, not expand them. *Especially* in the face of dealing with the unpredictability of climate change.

I hope you receive a lot of comments against this. We will be watching very closely.

Thank you.

https://canadians.org/nestle?fbclid=IwAR3tNOXz7Fb0hrBoq54dtoFCh3Rgy1YuM…