Please extend the moratorium…

Please extend the moratorium on taking groundwater by corporations. They use it to create plastic waste that ends up littering our lakes, rivers, forests, parks, cities, and landfills. They remove groundwater and we don't know what the long-term effects of that will be. We need to move away from disposable, bottled, single-use water.
Water sources are under stress from increasing commercial use, population pressure and drought-inducing climate change. A 2010 Statistics Canada study warned that renewable water in southern Canada declined by 8.5 per cent between 1971 to 2004.

It takes 5.5 litres of water to produce a 500 ml bottle – 0.5 litres in the bottle and another 5 litres contaminated when making the plastic bottle from oil. As Your Water Footprint author Stephen Leahy points out, “The five litres consumed in making the bottle are as real water as the 500 ml you might drink, but hardly anyone in business or government accounts for it.”

There are routinely more than 100 drinking water advisories in Indigenous communities where bottled water is often used as an unsustainable, short-term solution. The federal government must end these drinking water advisories and uphold the human right to water.
Provincial moratorium on bottled water takings

The Ontario government recently extended a moratorium on new or expanded bottled water takings. While this is a positive step, it doesn’t go far enough – a full ban is needed.

A recent poll revealed that 82 per cent of Ontario residents want the provincial government to permanently stop issuing permits for extracting groundwater to sell as bottled water. Canadian bottled water exports to the U.S. have increased by 383 per cent in eight years.

Provincial governments must review water rates for other industries, hold public consultations on how to prioritize water uses, and fund job retraining for workers in the bottled water industry.