"WE'RE SUCKING WITHIN GOVERNMENT GUIDELINES"

The above title is the caption on page 8 of today's Waterloo Region Record political cartoon. It is in my opinion the best political hot potato cartoon I've seen in a very long time. It shows a Nestle Bottled Water plant situtaed beside the Province of Ontario with a hose going from the factory down into a very deep hole in the middle of the province. This hole exemplifies the drawdown and incredible lowering of the water table throughout the province allegedly caused by water bottling companies. It is both hilarious and visually graphic. Well done by the author and well done by the Record in publishing it.

Also in today's Record is a story titled "Changes coming for bottled water companies?". While I read it I realized how similar it was to a story published in the Record this past Monday and to which I commented here on Tuesday. Indeed at the end of the story there is a "Note to readers:" which advises that today's story is a corrected version from the original which stated that Nestle Canada and Nestle Waters Canada were extracting significantly larger quantities of water than today's story stated. While a correction is a good thing I find it strange that the Record felt the need to rewrite a completed corrected version versus simply a simple correction published in today's record. I'm simply guessing here but is this an example of corporate power run amok? Did Nestle's threaten a lawsuit unless they got a whole new story?

Regardless there are a couple of new quotes including ones from Premier Kathleen Wynne. She is in agreement that the $3.71 charge per million litres of groundwater is ridiculous. As a skeptic I have to wonder how much Nestle and other bottled water companies have donated to the Liberal coffers over the years. I also wonder how much their groundwater extraction will be curtailed and how much per million litres they will be paying in the future.