The Council of Canadians Mid Island chapter and the Vancouver Island Water Watch Coalition hosted Maude Barlow at a public forum in Nanaimo last night. The public forum attracted a full-house of 300 people at the Bowen Park Recreation Complex.
Vancouver-based Council of Canadians water campaigner Emma Lui says, “Maude Barlow speaks to another full house in Nanaimo tonight! Great discussion on making water an election issue. It’s key we press election candidates on issues like Kinder Morgan, Site C, fracking and LNG, Nestle and bottled water, logging, federal water legislation, the Water Sustainability Act and more!”
In further detail:
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the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline would cross 1,063 waterways in the province and poses a risk spill to the Pacific Ocean -
the Site C dam is being built on the Peace River in Treaty 8 territory without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples -
Premier Christy Clark’s agenda of liquefied natural gas projects would mean a massive use of freshwater for fracking (more than seven billion litres of water was used for fracking in BC in 2012) -
Nestle extracts about 265 million litres of water each year from the Kawkawa aquifer in Hope in Sto:lo territory -
2,430 square kilometres of rain forest was logged on Vancouver Island between 2004 and 2015 which also means damage to wetlands -
the federal Transport committee just failed to recommend the full reinstatement and enhancement of the Navigable Waters Protection Act -
the BC Water Sustainability Act still includes the antiquated ‘first in time first in right’ provision in which an older water-taking permit held by a mining company would take priority over a new permit for drinking water
Barlow drew from her latest book Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada’s Water Crisis to talk about these issues in the lead-up to the provincial election that will be held on May 9.
A Mainstreet/Postmedia poll released yesterday showed that the NDP have 36 per cent support, the Liberals 33 per cent, the Greens 19 per cent, and the undecided vote is at about 25 per cent. There are suggestions now that this could result in a minority government, the first in 65 years.
The tour was also Courtenay (April 6) and now proceeds to Victoria (tonight), Williams Lake (April 10), and Kamloops (April 11). These events are all being organized by local Council of Canadians chapters. For details on this tour, please click here.
