Water Background Information

Wendy R. Holm, P.Ag. December 8, 2005 (931 words)

A scant year and a half after we did it, we're at it again. In the dead of winter and for no good reason, Canadians are going to the polls in an election we neither want nor need.

In February the taxpayer purse will be some $300 million lighter and another minority government will be in place in Ottawa.
Nothing much will have changed for farming.

It's not that there's any shortage of issues that should be on the table. It's just that they won't make it there. Elections, as former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell once said, are no place to talk policy.

The lethal cost of inadequate public water management was indisputable this summer when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast wiping out some of the levees built to protect the city of New Orleans. Tragically, it could have been avoided if federal government had made public welfare a priority over private interests.

By Pat Joseph

Round-the-clock images of the human toll of Hurricane Katrina forced long- ignored issues of race and class into America's living rooms-and brought Robert Bullard's decades-long struggle for environmental justice to the forefront.

According to Public Citizen's web site, the two largest water corporations in the world are part of French transnational Suez and German energy conglomerate RWE. Ranked 79th and 78th among Fortune's Global 100 List, these two water giants capture nearly 40 percent of the existing water market share. The French company, Vivendi, previously ranked 51st has dropped off the list, but remains a strong contender. These multinationals are now gaining a foothold in the United States, where they operate through a number of subsidiaries.