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As the federal government prepares to introduce its budget, the
Council of Canadians is calling for the allocation of
significant resources to protecting the Great Lakes as a
Commons, a Public Trust and a Protected Bioregion. The Council
of Canadians outlines how and why to do this in a new report
today entitled Our Great Lakes Commons: A People’s Plan to
Protect the Great Lakes Forever.
“The Great Lakes crisis is part of the global crisis, in which
we are quickly running out of fresh water,” says Council of
Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, author of the report, which
is available at
www.canadians.org/water. “It's not a closed hydrological
cycle like we were taught-- we are losing clean water through
irrigation, bottled water, virtual water trade and more.”
Our Great Lakes Commons is a call to understanding and a call to
action on an exciting new proposal to designate the Great Lakes
and its tributary waters as a lived Commons, to be shared,
protected, carefully managed and enjoyed by all who live around
them. The Great Lakes Basin Commons would need to be protected
by a legal and political framework based on Public Trust
Doctrine, underpinning in law that the Great Lakes are central
to the very existence of those people, plants and animals living
on or near them and therefore must be protected for the common
good from generation to generation.
“It’s time for the federal government to step up their
commitment to restoring the Great Lakes,” says Council of
Canadians national water campaigner Emma Lui, “The Obama
administration had originally proposed $475 million for Great
Lakes clean up, even the Republican party supported $225 million
for the Restoration Initiative. In the last budget, the Harper
Government allocated a mere $8 million to protect the Great
Lakes. The federal government needs to increase funding
significantly in order to protect the Great Lakes as a commons,
public trust and protected bioregion.”
In the water chapter on water in the Alternative Federal Budget,
the Council of Canadians calls for $3.375 billion in new funding
over five years, to clean up polluted lakes and rivers, protect
Canada’s waterways from invasive species, and to clean-up the
Great Lakes.
“Scientists say that the Great Lakes could be bone dry in 80
years,” Barlow adds, citing the case of the Aral Sea, the fourth
largest lake in the world, but now just 10 percent of its former
size. “The World Bank says that water demand is outstripping
supply by 40%, producing great suffering.”
The long-term goal of the network proposing the Great Lakes
Basin Commons – which includes the Council of Canadians, On the
Commons and Food & Water Watch – is to eventually see a full
treaty between Canada and the United States that declares the
Great Lakes to be a lived Commons, Public Trust and Protected
Bioregion, one that is also adopted by the states, provinces and
First Nations of the Basin.
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