To the Editor,
Re: Council responsible on water decision, Letters, May 26.
The Council for Canadians is a non-profit Ontario-based organization.
It is waving a red maple leaf logo and include ‘Canadian’ in its header, but it is not an official government entity.
We should know who they are and what they represent before signing off on their Blue Community Project.
The Council of Canadians’ water campaign is calling for a national water policy that protects Canada’s water from bulk exports and or privatization.
I have a real problem with this because some locations in B.C. require fresh water to be delivered by third parties. The big corporations also offering bottled water services to the community are here to make money and employ local workers.
To suggest that the City of Nanaimo could be responsible to provide free fresh water stations at hundreds of venues is an expensive proposition.
Signing on to a Blue Community Project is a message to some corporations that Nanaimo is not willing to do business in the future. This is not in the best interest of a city that just invested huge in a convention centre.
If we do sign in on the Blue Community Project we should have a clause that stipulates that we can bail out at any time and for any reason without any legal obligations. The signing of a Council of Canadians policy or project may in fact deter foreign investment in our community.
An agreement on one policy will lead to other craftily-worded policies in the future. To sign a clean water agreement might also tie us to their anti-pipeline ideas in the near future.
The Council of Canadians is also involved in many other projects and stands on beliefs that not everyone in B.C. will agree with. The anti-corporate attitude suggests that local governments need to be put blockades against free enterprise.
My opinion is that we do not need to sign anything. We can tend our own garden.
Matt James
Nanaimo
