Potable water is set to become the public issue following the environment. When the Mulroney government negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)critical oversights were included in the agreement that leave Canada at the mercy of any entrepreneur seeking to extract water from this country's lakes and aquifers to sell to the parched areas of the U.S.A and to countries elsewhere.

The Great Lakes Annex is a proposal to divert water into the U.S.A. Last October was the deadline for public input into this agreement released last summer by eight U.S. States. If permitted this will see unlimited water diversion from our Great Lakes while threatening Canada's sovereignty.

Legal challenges under the terms of NAFTA are already in play. In 1998 Sun Belt Water Inc. of California became the third company in a year to sue the Canadian government. Sun Belt is suing for $22,000,000.because of an earlier decision by British Columbia preventing them from exporting billions of litres of water from B.C. to California.

Nestles sells 100,000,000,000 litres of water in plastic bottles around the world. They pay for the right to water from community taps , put it through their reverse osmosis process and sell it back to the consumer for 1,100 times what one would pay for it from the tap. The plastic bottles are another source of great pollution.

Soft drink producers are also water hunters. They use satellite imagery to find underground sources of water for the company's exploitation.

Recently Uruguay declared water to be a human right and the Council of Canadians is working at getting a binding agreement at the U.N. that will say exactly the same thing.

Maude Barlow, the source of this information, says Canadians seem to lack the will to elect leaders with the policies that will effect any meaningful change to water usage policy.

Under NAFTA rules once exports of water are permitted foreign investors, mostly American, will be entitled to the same treatment as Canadians. Should the government pass a law prohibiting these exports corporations can then sue us for lost business, (Who did the editing of this agreement?)

Canada was the only country to vote twice against water as a human right at the U.N. Human Rights Meeting in 2002 and 2003. Could it be that Ottawa has plans to sell our water as a commodity once the price is attractive?

In the late 90s Nova Group of Sault Ste Marie applied to sell millions of litres daily from Lake Superior to Asia. It was beaten back by public pressure but we came within a whisker of selling about 600,000,000 litres each year.

The McCurdy Group of Newfoundland sought a permit to sell 52,000,000,000 litres annually from pristine Lake Gisborne (85 times more than the Lake Superior plan.) Newfoundland will consider bulk water exporting once the price is right.

The earlier Global Business Forum Conference held in Banff was addressed by the president of G.West's global water energy strategy team and the proposal was to construct of a pipeline from Manitoba to Texas thus allowing the export of a billion litres of fresh water to George W. Bush's parched territory.

The Council of Canadians is our preeminent watchdog and if we value our homeland and heritage we should send our support by writing or telephoning them at: 170 Laurier Ave., suite 700, Ottawa, K1P 5V5. Telephone, 1- 800-387 7177. Donations would help the cause.

Ken Hayward

Mono