Short

There are those who say if the US ever declared war on Canada, it would be over a precious resource. Not oil, not minerals or lumber. Canada is full of resources, but its greatest is water.

Or perhaps, if a global water shortage were ever to come to pass, we will have allowed that water to dwindle before any such struggle would be possible.

Tha seems to be the fear of a group of citizens from Wellington County in western Ontario that won media attention this week in their bid to prevent Nestlé Canada from bottling and selling the natural resource that has become ever more precious in a regional drought.

Their fight has lasted years—-they have ethical objections to the use of water as a commodity— but in the past few weeks, a legal loophole has helped them gain attention and outrage from those who don’t usually pay attention.

In April, Nestlé Waters Canada, which collects the water used for the ubiquitous Pure Life plastic water bottles, applied for a five-year extension on its permit, which expired at the end of July.

In April, there was no drought.

The Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change has yet to approve the permit, and hasn’t given a timeline for the approval process.

In the meantime, and according to the law, Nestlé may continue to pump millions of litres of water, despite the expired permit, because the application was made more than 90 days in advance of that expiration date.

The Ministry is following its own, bureaucratic timeline. The company is following the law.

And yet, anyone can see that to pump millions of litres from the ground in a region suffering drought, especially when that water is used as a commodity, is absurd. If Ontario law allows it, whom do those laws protect?

Certainly, the situation is unusual. Southern Ontario is generally a water-rich region. And every year, Ontario grants hundreds of permits to take water measuring in the tens of thousands to the millions of litres daily. Often, those permits are for construction projects. And while the government allows for 30 days of public comment before granting an application, there are often no comments received.

But there is symbolism in Ontario granting a relatively inexpensive permit to a company that makes its profit from extracting water from the province. It’s irksome, for sure, and while the law says that until the pending permit application is processed, the company may continue its operations, those operations don’t seem terribly ethical.

It’s possible the law will change, and Ontario will force extractions to a halt in exceptional situations. But in the meantime, we’re left to rely on the ethics of a large company, one whose main goal is to continue growing through economic gains.

Like a hungry caterpillar devastating the plant it’s munching on, some companies will continue to grow despite the damage to their source.

Let’s hope, if the scenario of a global water shortage comes to pass, we’ll still have water to protect.

mihal@mihalzada.com