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Council helps support petition drive for P3 referendum in Regina

Metro News reports, “A petition against privatizing part of Regina’s wastewater system is only one week and approximately 2,000 signatures away from meeting its goal. The community coalition Regina Water Watch has until June 20 to hand approximately 20,000 signatures of citizens – amounting to about 10 per cent of Regina’s population – in to city hall in order to trigger a referendum on a public-private partnership (P3) funding model for a new wastewater treatment plant. If they reach their target number of signatures by next Thursday and a city clerk accepts the signatures as valid, they will bring about the first referendum in Regina in more than 10 years and force the issue to a public vote.”

The Council of Canadians Regina chapter has been very involved with Regina Water Watch in this ongoing fight-back against the proposed P3 wastewater treatment plant.

And the Council of Canadians has e-mailed a message to its members in Regina from Maude Barlow that says, “I’m writing to urge you to take action now against a public-private partnership contract that would lock the city of Regina into a 30-year contract and see a private company design, build, finance, operate and maintain Regina’s new wastewater treatment facility.” We ask our members to sign the petition at any one of the locations set up across the city to collect signatures, to print the petition and share as broadly as possible, and to volunteer at an upcoming event to gather signatures.

Everyone involved in this effort has collected a large number of signatures for the petition very quickly. In early-May, the Regina Leader Post reported, “The Regina Water Watch group is a coalition of members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 21, which represents staff at the waste water treatment plant, the Council of Canadians’ Regina chapter and other local citizens’ groups. So far, 6,000 signatures have been collected by 180 volunteers.”

In terms of next steps and timelines, CJME has reported, “The Cities Act dictates that the group collect a number of signatures equal to 10 per cent of Regina’s population within two months. …If the threshold for signatures is reached, the city would consult a statistician to figure out how many individual names need to be verified to call the petition valid. Then the actual vote itself would have to be held within nine months.”

For more, please read:
Regina Water Watch website
UPDATE: P3 wastewater plant in Regina could cost $61 million more than public option
NEWS: Regina Water Watch launches petition for referendum on P3 wastewater plant
NEWS: Barlow & Moist speak against P3 wastewater project in Regina
NEWS: Regina chapter to oppose P3 project at City Council meeting today