On September 12, Mayor Ray Millar and the municipal council of the Township of Tiny voted to become a blue community. Tiny Township, located in south-central Ontario, has a population of just over 10,000 people and includes the communities of Bluewater Beach, East Tay Point, Georgina Beach, Nottawaga Beach, Wyebridge and Wyevale.
I was there today along with organizing assistant Maryam Adrangi to present Tiny Township officials with a plaque recognizing their community as a blue community.
The Blue Communities Project is an initiative of the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and in Quebec with Eau Secours. It calls on municipalities to recognize water as a human right, to ban the sale of bottled water in civic spaces, and to support the public ownership of water utilities.
Council of Canadians activists may remember the campaign against the Site 41 landfill, which was to be located in the Township of Tiny on top of the Alliston aquifer. The township had long expressed its opposition to the garbage dump. The dump was finally defeated in September 2009.
Tiny, Ontario is the third Blue Community in Canada. On March 22 this year, Burnaby, British Columbia became the first Blue Community in Canada. Then on June 23, the city council of Victoria, BC voted to become a Blue Community. In early-October, Midland, Ontario signalled that it was exploring becoming a Blue Community, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10966. On November 16, North Vancouver voted to become a Blue Community in principle, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=11974. Kingston, Ontario and Port Alberni, BC have passed parts of the Blue Community resolution, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10633 and http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10332.
To find out how to make your community a Blue Community, please go to http://canadians.org/bluecommunities.
