The Council of Canadians South Niagara chapter tabled at the St. Catharines Farmer’s Market yesterday.
Chapter activist Fiona McMurran tells us, “We were there from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm. Timothy’s visual presentation aided him, Joanne and I fielded questions on bottled water issues, Gary used his display on the Great Lakes to prompt discussion about threats to our inland waters, and Chris made all the arrangements with the city and provided us with the triptych. All in all, quite a success!”
Bottled water
The Council of Canadians have been encouraging people across the country to comment on bottled water takings in Ontario. To tell Ontario Premier Wynne that Nestle and bottled water have to go, please click on this online action alert. To join the 48,315 people who have signed our pledge to boycott Nestle, please click here.
Great Lakes
There are numerous threats to the Great Lakes, including now US President Donald Trump. Last week, he proposed the elimination of all funding to clean-up the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative was launched by President Barack Obama in 2009 and has invested more than $1.3 billion to clean up toxic pollution, reduce runoff from cities and farms, restore habitat and fight invasive species. The Council of Canadians is calling on the Canadian environment minister to step up by both spending $500 million this year on cleaning up the lakes as well as rejecting a proposed nuclear waste dump on the shores of Lake Huron. For more on both of those demands, please click here.
The South Niagara chapter took these actions as part of World Water Day.
The Montreal, Brandon/Westman, Centre Wellington, Chilliwack, Cowichan Valley, Edmonton, Guelph, Kent County, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, Medicine Hat, Northumberland, Peterborough-Kawarthas, Prince Albert, South Shore, Sudbury, Whitehorse and Windsor-Essex are also taking action between March 2 and April 3 to mark World Water Day.
Those actions include: presenting to municipal councils to become a blue community, screening the films Bottled Life, Water on the Table and Above All Else, organizing a provincial all-candidates meeting on water, taking a group-selfie in front of a local river, holding public forums, tabling, holding discussions, organizing a tap water versus bottled water taste test, mobilizing a cross-border rally, and more.
Chapters have also been photographing Nestle bottled water labels across the country to show how far bottled water is trucked outside of the watershed where it was extracted. You can read more about that here.
For details on this year’s World Water Day activities, please click here.
#WorldWaterDay
