2011 is shaping up to be an exciting year for the Council of Canadians.
Next year we will be launching three new campaigns.
Early in the new year we will be hiring a health care campaigner and re-dedicating ourselves to defending and expanding public health care in Canada.
We will also be seeking to declare the Great Lakes a commons, public trust and protected bio-region – and ensure that plans to ship radioactive waste on the lakes are stopped. This work will include a new report and multi-city speaking tour by Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow.
And we will be launching a national campaign calling for federal and provincial action to stop fracking, a dangerous shale gas extraction method that destroys water.
In addition to this work, we will be ramping up our campaign to defeat the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. While the Harper government seeks to complete the deal by the end of 2011, we will deliver the message in Canada (with a speaking tour) and Europe that CETA equals water privatization and unfettered tar sands expansion.
Protection of the Arctic will also be a key priority as we seek to stop oil and gas drilling in the Arctic so that the North doesn’t see a repeat of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
With the nickel processing plant and the destruction of Sandy Pond scheduled to begin in 2013, we will support a legal challenge against the federal government and other efforts against one of the world’s biggest and most harmful mining companies, Vale.
At the United Nations we will build on the right to water and sanitation resolution by advocating for a universal declaration recognizing the rights of nature with the publication of a new book in the spring, as well as by working in solidarity with Indigenous communities to have the right to water recognized in Canada.
We will also be working hard over the coming year to ensure that a climate agreement reflecting the imperative of climate justice is furthered at the next climate summit in South Africa.
And, as always, there will be so much more. We will continue to call on the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to divest from private water utilities in Chile (and send Ontario teachers there to see the problem first-hand), we will work with farmers, small municipalities and concerned citizens to stop water markets in Alberta, and we will be part of an international movement building to derail the plans of the big water transnational corporations at their World Water Forum in Marseilles in early-2012.
2011 promises to be an exciting year of fast-paced political campaigns, popular pressure, and wins. Your support is needed more than ever.
