MAUDE BARLOW'S BOOK "BLUE FUTURE"

Last Wednesday evening over in Guelph, I listened to Maude Barlow (Council of Canadians) speak among other things, about her latest book. This book titled "Blue Future" is the final book in a trilogy with the first two titled "Blue Gold" and "Blue Covenant". I'm barely into the first Chapter and I'm finding it extremely interesting as it delves into the reasons and history behind this desperate need to realize that water is a basic, essential human right.

The book is broken into Four Principles with several chapters for each. These Principles are "Water is a human right", "Water is a common heritage", "Water has rights too", "Water can teach us how to live together". If this book is as interesting and informative throughout as it is so far then I expect that I will eventually read the first two books as well.

Maude spoke about a world wide corporate attempt to obtain legal right to the world's water. Here in Canada and even just a few miles down the road we have already entered the battle. Yesterday's posting on Nestle is but the tip of the iceburg. Currently and historically all waters in Canada have been public water. Whether rivers, lakes or streams; surface water has been owned by all of us. Groundwater has also been held appropriately in public ownership. Municipalities may develop wellfields and distribute water but it is owned by the public. Yes we pay for treating the water and sending it from the wellfields to our homes but if we don't like how the Region or municipalities handle our water we can vote them out of office.

Keep in mind that corporations can not unilaterally "buy" or steal our mutual water. They need the direct assistance of governments at all levels. Governments contrary to popular expectations are not there for the benefit of the majority whatsoever. They are in place as a buffer between potentially outraged citizens and the elites who wish to continue and increase their personal wealth and power. Governments can and do give legitimacy through ridiculous legislation to the slow selling of a country's resources and independence. This governmental selling out of a country's citizen owned resources must be thwarted. Water is life itself and why would we voluntarily hand over this power to a very few? Our governments have and will sell out for their personal long term gain and we as citizens must be vigilant. How would Woolwich Township citizens have felt twenty-four years ago about dealing with an off-shore based multinational corporation when their water was contaminated? Believe me it was difficult enough when the cause of the water destruction was a multi national corporation but at least our Regional and municipal politicians had the good sense to respond quickly and aggressively and took immediate responsibility to replace our water supply. Can you imagine a for profit corporation advising that they'd have to wait for the next quarter as it wasn't in this quarter's budget to do emergency repairs?