EDITORS NOTE: This article has come through from the Council of Canadians. You may want to try and get hold of the five part series.

The Sun Media newspaper chain is running a 5-part series of articles on water called ‘H20 Canada’ by Vivian Song. Most of the articles feature our national chairperson Maude Barlow:



MAUDE BARLOW HAS BECOME THE AL GORE OF THE WATER WORLD
"Maude Barlow is a surprisingly soft-spoken, humble presence. After reading her book Blue Covenant, 218 pages of water scarcity stats that will scare the beejeezus out of you, I'm half expecting to meet a Joan of Arc-hetype crusader, riding high atop a ridge on horseback, eyes darting wildly below for aquatic injustices. Instead, I meet a woman whose written words speak louder than their author and whose maternal warmth comes from a wellspring of sincerity that can't be feigned. Barlow is described as the Al Gore of water, an internationally renowned water champion who, this month, was invited by the driest continent on earth, Australia, to address their water crisis...Like Gore, Barlow is welcomed both as a Canadian hero--gracing the pages of Australia's foremost daily newspaper The Age in a lengthy, flattering profile piece and a left-wing ideologue, dismissed as an anti-business dissenter. For five days last week, Sun Media dispelled some commonly held liquid myths in the Canadian psyche, namely the myth of water abundance in Canada. It's a crusade that has besotted the leader of the country's biggest advocacy group, the Council of Canadians, since stumbling upon it 'by accident' while trying to take Canada's water off the table in U.S.-Canada free trade negotiations."

OIL OR WATER

For years water advocates have likened the value of water as the next century’s oil given its growing scarcity around the world. Just as underground pipelines snake around the world carrying oil and gas, a network of pipelines is being built to move water, points out Maude Barlow in her book Blue Covenant. Meanwhile, most of the water used in the oil sands process is so contaminated it can’t be returned to the watersheds. Instead, the contaminated water, about 1.8 billion litres of toxic soup produced daily, is stored in tailing ponds the size of lakes. Alberta has about a dozen such ponds, covering about 50 sq/km land that was once boreal forest and wetlands."

TURN OFF CANADA'S TAP

In the middle of the Arizona desert, where a merciless heat zaps away all moisture, a group of entrepreneurs plan to build a water park oasis that will make it the largest water adventure park in the world...Meanwhile, the U.S. announced last year that 36 states face water shortages in the next four years. It’s this kind of immoderate squandering in the U.S. that makes them the largest per capita users of water in the world, water advocates say. And it’s why Canada should close the door should the U.S. come knocking for our water, they add. 'It’s not sustainable,' says Maude Barlow, an internationally known water advocate and author of Blue Covenant. 'I will share anything with anyone, but I won’t destroy the Canadian ecology so people can have golf courses and swimming pools.'

CANADA'S WATER SUPPLY DRYING UP
"
Under the Constitution, responsibility for water is divided between the provinces and the feds. But provinces are traditionally viewed as the owners of natural resources. So, with the encouragement of the feds, many drafted their own legislation aimed at protecting their water from bulk export. But the result was a hodgepodge of feeble provincial legislation, some of which are toothless under international trade obligations, says Owen Saunders of the Canadian Institute of Resources Law at a public policy seminar in Ottawa in May. And once one province opens their tap and engages in bulk water export and Quebec and Newfoundland have both expressed interest in selling their goods, experts say we won’t be able to turn off the tap."

COMMERCIALIZATION MAY COME AT PUBLIC'S EXPENSE
"Governments need to reprioritize the importance of water, experts say, not allow bottled water to undermine the public tap. 'When we make a commitment to public water, then we make a commitment to keep it clean,' said Maude Barlow, outspoken water advocate and president of the Council of Canadians. 'If we no longer care what comes out of the public tap, it's a death knell for Canadian water.'"



These articles can be read at http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/water/home.html and http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/water/2008/06/27/6009316.html, while today's article likening Maude to Al Gore can be read at http://www.timminspress.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1098581.



To read the article about Maude in The Age, referenced in the first paragraph above, please go to http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/against-the-flow/2008/06/06/1212259095469