March, 10 2016, 12:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Dylan Penner, Media Officer
Cell: (613) 795-8685
Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 249
E-mail: dpenner@canadians.org
Shore Up Water Protections in Federal Budget on World Water Day
The federal government should create a Minister of Water in cabinet to carry out urgently needed expansion of water protections, says the Council of Canadians. With the federal budget being tabled on March 22 - World Water Day - the Council of Canadians is urging the federal government to allocate adequate funds and fulfill its responsibility to protect water.
WASHINGTON
The federal government should create a Minister of Water in cabinet to carry out urgently needed expansion of water protections, says the Council of Canadians. With the federal budget being tabled on March 22 - World Water Day - the Council of Canadians is urging the federal government to allocate adequate funds and fulfill its responsibility to protect water.
In Alternative Federal Budget 2016: It's time to move on, released today, the Council of Canadians is calling for $7.4 billion to be spent on protecting drinking water and freshwater sources. The water chapter calls for funds to recognize the human right to water and sanitation, support public water and water infrastructure, end drinking water advisories in First Nations, reinstate gutted water science and research programs, and assess the impacts of tar sands, fracking, mining and other energy development projects.
"The Alternative Federal Budget calls for the human right to water and sanitation to be recognized and communities need adequate funding to do that," says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "Governments around the world came together to recognize this fundamental right at the United Nations over five years ago. Yet five years later, clean water sources are still being threatened by sewage, bottled water takings, fracking, tar sands pipelines and other industrial projects. To give life and meaning to the human right to water and sanitation, the federal government must provide the funding needed to empower communities to protect freshwater."
The water chapter of the AFB calls for:
- $5.8 billion to create a national public water and wastewater fund, including infrastructure aid for small municipalities and training, certification and conservation programs
- $500 million to protect the Great Lakes
- $470 million for water and wastewater in First Nations communities
- $117 million for protecting freshwater including implementing a groundwater protection plan, reviewing virtual water exports from Canada and creating a Minister of Water cabinet position
- $80 million for assessments of fracking, tar sands, mining and other energy projects, including community consultations and seeking free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities
- $94 million for reinstating federal funding for the Experimental Lakes Area and water programs at Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, Parks Canada Agency and other departments
"We were heartened to see Prime Minister Trudeau commit to addressing some very serious and long-standing water issues. On budget day, the Trudeau government will show how committed it is to seeing through its promises," says Emma Lui, water campaigner for the Council of Canadians. "From the government's commitment to ending First Nations drinking water advisories to restoring freshwater protections, communities from coast to coast are waiting to see what action the new government will take to steer us away from the Harper government's harmful legacy on freshwater."
The Alternative Federal Budget is prepared by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Read the water chapter.
Founded in 1985, the Council of Canadians is Canada's leading social action organization, mobilizing a network of 60 chapters across the country.
Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 249LATEST NEWS
House Dems Voice 'Deep Concern' Over Biden Claim That Israel Is Legally Using US Arms
A letter from 26 lawmakers notes the "stark differences and gaps" between what Biden administration officials say and the opinions of "prominent experts and global institutions" accusing Israel of genocide.
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More than two dozen House Democrats on Tuesday challenged the Biden administration's claim that Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons in compliance with domestic and international law—an assertion made amid an ongoing World Court probe of "plausibly" genocidal Israeli policies and practices in Gaza.
Citing "mounting credible and deeply troubling reports and allegations" of human rights crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza and soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank, 26 congressional Democrats led by Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar—who co-chairs President Joe Biden's reelection campaign—and Joaquin Castro asked U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines "whether and how" their agencies determined Israel is lawfully using arms provided by Washington.
"We write to express our deep concern regarding the U.S. Department of State's recent comments regarding assurances from the Israeli government, under National Security Memorandum (NSM) 20, that the Israeli government is using U.S.-origin weapons in full compliance with relevant U.S. and international law and is not restricting the delivery of humanitarian assistance," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Cabinet members.
The letter acknowledges the "grave concerns" of institutions and experts around the world regarding Israel's "conduct throughout the war in Gaza, its policies regarding civilian harm and military targeting, unauthorized expansion of settlements and settler violence in the West Bank, and potential use of U.S. arms by settlers, in additional to limitations on humanitarian aid supported by the U.S."
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While the lawmakers didn't mention the International Court of Justice's January 26
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The lawmakers' letter came amid reports of fresh Israeli atrocities, including a drone strike on a playground in the Maghazi refugee camp in northern Gaza that killed at least 11 children. Eyewitnesses described a "horrific scene of children torn apart."
While Biden has called out Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza—much of it carried out using U.S.-supplied warplanes and munitions including 2,000-pound bombs that can level whole city blocks—his administration has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel, has repeatedly sidestepped Congress to fast-track emergency armed aid, and is seeking to provide the key ally with billions of dollars in addition weaponry atop the nearly $4 billion it gets annually from Washington.
This, despite multiple federal laws—and the administration's own rules— prohibiting U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators.
According to Palestinian and international officials, more than 110,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since October 7. Most of the dead are women and children. At least 7,000 Palestinians are also missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced in what many Palestinians are calling a second Nakba, a reference to the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
A growing number of not only progressive lawmakers but also mainstream Democrats are calling for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel.
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The wife of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sharply criticized "assurances" the U.S. government made as the U.K. High Court considers allowing the 52-year-old Australian's extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison.
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"A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange," the document adds, noting that he has not been charged with any offense for which that is a possible punishment. It comes after the U.K. court ruled last month that the Biden administration had until Tuesday to confirm that he wouldn't face the death penalty and if it did not, he could continue appealing his extradition.
Responding on social media, his wife, Stella Assange—who is an attorney—blasted the U.S. assurances as "weasel words."
"The United States has issued a nonassurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty," she said. "It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution's previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen."
"The Biden administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late."
"Instead, the U.S. has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can 'seek to raise' the First Amendment if extradited," she added. "The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family's extreme distress about his future—his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in U.S. prison for publishing award-winning journalism. The Biden administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late."
The U.K. court's next hearing is scheduled for May 20. Last week, reporters asked U.S. President Joe Biden about requests from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and members of the country's Parliament to drop the extradition effort and charges. He said that "we're considering it."
So far, the Biden administration has ignored significant pressure from Australian and U.S. politicians as well as human rights and press freedom groups, and continued to pursue the extradition of Julian Assange, who was charged under former President Donald Trump—the Republican expected to face the Democratic president in the November election.
Assange was charged under the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for publishing classified documents including the "Collateral Murder" video and the Afghan and Iraq war logs. Since British authorities dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London—where he lived with political asylum for seven years—he has been jailed in the city's Belmarsh Prison.
The WikiLeaks founder's wife, with whom he has two children, was not alone in condemning the U.S. assurances on Tuesday.
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Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, similarly said that "no one who cares about press freedom should take any comfort at all from the United States' assurance that Assange will be permitted to 'rely upon' the First Amendment."
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Following recent reports that Google may soon expand its tech collaboration with the Israeli government, dozens of the company's employees on Tuesday entered its offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California and announced that they wouldn't leave until executives pull out of its $1.2 billion cloud services and data contract with the country.
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In Sunnyvale, workers began occupying the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, while employees in the company's New York office began a sit-in in a common space.
Outdoor rallies were also scheduled to take place in San Francisco and Seattle, with both Amazon and Google employees attending.
Former Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired last month for disrupting a Google Israel event, was among those who protested in New York.
The sit-ins came a week after Time magazine reported that Google has entered further negotiations with the Israeli government in recent weeks, even as international human rights experts raise alarm that Israeli officials have directly caused famine to take hold in parts of Gaza by blocking humanitarian aid.
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