GUELPH POLITICAST #230 - Messaging on a Bottle

It’s hard to imagine a more personal environmental issue for many in Guelph than water. We’re a community that gets our drinking water from ground sources, and that means we have to be even more guarded about potential threats to those sources, which has long included private water taking operations. Some big changes are coming in that sector as you might have heard, and we’re going to get perspective from an activist and a politician.

A few weeks ago, the Government of Ontario announced proposed changes to water taking in Ontario, and around that same time Nestle Waters announced that they’re selling their water bottling operations in Canada. To water protection advocates, it’s like hell froze over twice!

Way back in 2016, the water taking contract between the Province and Nestle Waters operation in Aberfoyle expired. Still, Nestle has been taking water for the last four years, and all the Ontario government has done in the mean time is put a moratorium on new water taking permits, a moratorium that carried over when the new government took over in 2018. Now that moratorium is set to expire, and Nestle is selling its water bottling operations in Canada to a Shelburne company. What the heck’s going on?

To answer that, and other questions, we will be joined on this week's podcast by Robert Case, who is the chair of the Wellington Water Watchers, and Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner. We will hear from Case about his thoughts on Nestle leaving Canada, and whether Nestle is the canary in the coalmine for the profitability of bottled water. Then, we will hear from Schreiner as he talks about the politics being played by the Ontario government, and where this issue sits in terms of other government action on the environment.

So let's consider the future of bottled water and water bottling on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

To learn more about the Wellington Water Watchers, you can go to their website here, and to learn more about the update to Ontario’s Water Quality Management framework, you can click here.

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