Just when we thought the Conservatives might be the only ones bent on selling us out to big business, Ontario’s Liberal Party proves that they haven’t missed the boat when it comes to “giving us the business.” The Province of Ontario’s proposed, “Safeguarding and Sustaining Ontario’s Water Act” proposes to protect water from being diverted from the Great Lakes via a whopping $3.71 surcharge on every million litres of water consumed by water bottlers, canning companies and heavy industry. That’s progress for you. Big Business will no longer be freeloading on our water-supply, while in some cases selling it (the same water supply we are already taxed to provide treatment infrastructure for) back to us for $1.69 per 1 litre bottle. To date Businesses have not indicated any plans for appealing this ghastly $0.00000371 operating cost and/or whether they will round it up to a penny and pass it along to the consumer.
In a related story: Apparently the new math being used in Alberta is not that much better. According to a MacLeans magazine article entitled, “Doomsday, Alberta Stands Accused” the three oil sands projects currently operating in Alberta are now licensed to extract 349 million cubic metres of water a year, twice what’s required annually for the entire city of Calgary. With 20 more projects in the works, extractions from the Athabasca River could triple in the next decade. By 2020, the oil sands could use as much as half the river’s flow in winter, a time when it is at its lowest ebb and fish populations are most stressed. Alberta’s oil sands operations also struggle with the problem of what to do with the water once it’s been used. Only eight per cent can be made sufficiently clean to go back to the Athabasca. The rest stagnates in huge ponds. “Birds that land on them never take off.” Consumption of natural gas, another critical oil sands ingredient, also boggles the mind. The industry’s daily consumption could heat 3.2 million homes for a day. Environmentalists have long decried the absurdity of wasting such huge quantities of reasonably clean energy to extract dirtier oil.