There simply is nothing to be gained by ordinary people by putting the most precious commodity in the world into the hands of a few corporations.

Tony Clark Polaris Institute

Critics of Canadian environmental and trade policy say Canada is squandering water by gutting environmental agencies and allowing large amounts of water to become contaminated. At the same time, some Canadian provinces are flirting with the idea of bulk exports of water to the United States and other countries where supplies are becoming scarce.

Environmentalists and free-trade opponents have seized upon last year's contamination of the drinking water in the small town of Walkerton, Ontario as a case study in the perils of privatization, deregulation, and free trade. The incident left seven people dead and more than 2,000 with illnesses caused by E-Coli, out of a total population of 8,000.

E-Coli is a bacterium. It causes haemolytic uremic syndrome, the symptoms of which include stomach pain, fever and severe diarrhea, which can lead to bloody diarrhea.

The bacterium seeped into Walkerton's wells from nearby hog farms. Local officials tried to cover up the contamination but were forced to go public when sheer numbers of patients overwhelmed the town's hospitals and clinics Most of the people who died were residents of seniors' homes.

At the end of June, after months of hearings into the tragedy, Ontario Premier Mike Harris took responsibility for any role his government played in the tainted water tragedy while brushing aside the argument that he and his cabinet ignored the safety risks of slashing the environment ministry's budget.

His government had cut 48 percent of the financing for the environment ministry in Canada's largest province after coming to power in 1995 on a pledge to balance budgets and streamline government services. It also privatized water-testing labs and handed management of water treatment to municipalities. In Walkerton, the manager of the water works confessed that he did not understand how testing worked, and that he often drank alcohol on the job.

Harris dismissed a series of cabinet documents and published reports that detailed the risks and insisted that his government did not ignore warnings of threats to the environment.

"We weren't given any advice that any of the reductions of the actual dollar expenditures led to any increase to the risk to health by any ministry, including the environment," he told a judicial inquiry called by his own government.

Harris denied his government targeted the environment ministry because of distaste for regulation, and pointed out that the tourism ministry's budget was cut by 80 percent between 1995 and 2000.

He admitted, however, that the Walkerton deaths were a "wake-up call" to the province, Canada and the rest of the world.

While environmentalists are using the Walkerton tragedy to draw attention to the risks of privatizing services and government budget cuts they say have sapped environmental protection agencies, anti-globalization activists worry that multinational corporations will take advantage of Canada's pro-free trade policies and cash-hungry decentralized governments to get permission to export water.

Tony Clark, head of the non-governmental Polaris Institute and an organizer of the Jul 6-8 conference on 'Water for People and Nature' in the western city of Vancouver, says the wasting and polluting of drinking water and the pressure for permission to export water are linked.

Greed, he says, is the common factor.

"Multinational corporations want to make money selling water, whether it's bottled water for drinking or bulk water for agribusiness, without regard for the cycle of water in the place where the water is taken, nor for the pollution issues in the place where the water is sold," says Clark.

Citizens' groups at this weekend's conference, he adds, are saying, "We need to rebuild and recover the water in aquifers in all of our countries. Shipping water is a stop-gap solution that only enriches multinational corporations while doing irreparable harm to the countries involved."

Clark says he finds it ironic that Canada's most notorious recent water poisoning incident, at Walkerton, was caused by seeping contamination from agribusiness plants, while, at the same time, Canada is being pressured to export water to countries where agribusiness waste has destroyed drinking water supplies.

He disagrees with the argument that water should be traded and priced as a commodity in order to reduce wastage by consumers.

"It's not ordinary people who waste water. It's large industries and agribusiness. They can afford to buy water from other corporations, but ordinary people can't," Clark asserts.

"The consensus here is definitely against water exports and further privatization of water utilities. There simply is nothing to be gained by ordinary people by putting the most precious commodity in the world into the hands of a few corporations," Clark says.

Copyright 2001 IPS

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