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Author Topic: water for sale
otter
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posted 13 August 2006 06:34 PM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
While the issue of u.s. and other international corporations setting their sights on exploiting Canada's unique fresh water infrastructure, it is important to examine the whole issue of marketing water itself.

Personally i choice to never buy any form of bottled water and if anyone comes into my presence with it i often question them on their choice.


From: agent provocateur inc. | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Proaxiom
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posted 13 August 2006 08:44 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't buy bottled water either, but just because it's a waste of money.

Bottled water and bulk water are different things. It's the latter we have to be careful about.


From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 August 2006 08:00 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Besides having more lumber and energy than 99 percent of countries, Canada also has a more fresh water than most. And yet our two old line parties still haven't managed to provide clean drinking water to far too many northern communities across the country.

And if the neoliberalists have their way, we'll have water metres on our taps like the poorest of Africans. We'll be paying market prices for our own water so that big business can continue wasting it on plastic widgets and commercial excess on an unprecedented scale.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
otter
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posted 14 August 2006 11:03 AM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Bottled water and bulk water are different things. It's the latter we have to be careful about.

Not so!

Both are about commodifying the basics of human existence. Now its water, next it will be air. Oh right, i forgot that selling oxygen is already a big hit in those cities where pollution is making it difficult to breath


From: agent provocateur inc. | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Proaxiom
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posted 14 August 2006 11:42 AM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The idea of bottled water is not really the sale of water, it is the sale of a service. Drinking water is essentially free out of our taps, so no one would pay for it otherwise. The value-add (mostly mythical, IMHO) is in whatever purification they are supposed to have done to it. I think some companies also put something about 'glacier water' or whatever on the bottle, to further add value to the service in that they transported this water from some place where water is free to some other place where water is free, but is presumably of a lower quality.

The bottled water market will never be meaningful in terms of overall water use. It's all the other uses for water that make a difference, especially industrial and agricultural usage.

What we have to watch for carefully is someone moving water from a place where there is an abundance to a place where there is a shortage. This could cause problems.


Air and water, as it happens, are public goods, which is why the government should make efforts to keep them clean. If it doesn't, it's inevitable that companies will step up to make money by offering purification services.


From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 14 August 2006 11:47 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I bought one bottle of water this summer because I couldn't find a water fountain, and took some bottles for free which were available following a 10k run in early july and a Duathlon last weekend. Personally my opinion of bottled water is that it is much more of a fashion accessory than a necessity.

Is the export of bulk water opposed by people here under all circumstances, or just to the wasteful United States? I think it's possible that in the following years we could get requests from Africa or the middle east perhaps.


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Proaxiom
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posted 14 August 2006 12:06 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Mostly to the United States, I think, and for two reasons.

First, due to proximity, it is feasible to export water in far greater quantities to the US than anywhere else.

Second, there is some concern that the NAFTA guaranteed access provisions could be applied to water if we start exporting it. I don't know how much merit there is to that argument, but I think I've heard it from credible sources. In that case, there is a chance we could lose control over our most precious natural resource.


From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 August 2006 10:16 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
oops

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 August 2006 10:20 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And due to proximity, it's far easier for the Yanks to siphon off our timber, oil and natural gas at firesale rates than any other imperialist master-nation, too.

ETA: And so when the oil and gas wells go dry in the future, they can use the same Canadian taxpayer-funded pipelines to send our water south while we pay market prices for the right to be hydrated.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 14 August 2006 10:34 PM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
And due to proximity, it's far easier for the Yanks to siphon off our timber, oil and natural gas at firesale rates than any other imperialist master-nation, too.

ETA: And so when the oil and gas wells go dry in the future, they can use the same Canadian taxpayer-funded pipelines to send our water south while we pay market prices for the right to be hydrated.


With regard to oil, does the USA pay below-market prices for Canadian oil or does the USA pay the world market price that everyone else pays?


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 14 August 2006 11:16 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:

With regard to oil, does the USA pay below-market prices for Canadian oil or does the USA pay the world market price that everyone else pays?


Compared with Saskatchewan, Alaska and socialist Norway, Alberta receives the lowest per barrel oil royalties. And not one thin dime in green taxes is collected by Alberta for oil extracted from tar sands.

Socialist Norway's Petroleum Fund is worth over $175 billion USDN. And that oil is offshore and more expensive to drill for and costs for sea-floor cleanup the responsibility of Norwegian government. Norway is a net creditor nation and uses oil revenues to pay for national daycare, well-funded socialized medicine and free university tuition for Norwegians.

After paying down the highest per capita provincial debts in Canadian history, Alberta's Heritage Fund is worth about $12 billion CDN. Pathetic!

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Proaxiom
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posted 15 August 2006 06:41 AM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
To actually answer Sven's question, oil extracted in Alberta goes for market price. The only time that wasn't true was when the NEP was in place, and the Canadian government forced companies to sell product below market price in Canada. That policy did a lot of damage to Alberta's economy, and it's why Albertans never elect more than 2 Liberals in any given election.
From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Martha (but not Stewart)
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posted 15 August 2006 09:02 AM      Profile for Martha (but not Stewart)     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Proaxiom:
The value-add (mostly mythical, IMHO) is in whatever purification they are supposed to have done to it.

Sometimes the value-add is simply the bottle and the convenience. I have been on long bike rides where it would have been worth a dollar to have a bottle of tap water in my basket, and where a convenience store was right next to me.


From: Toronto | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 19 August 2006 05:26 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Proaxiom:
To actually answer Sven's question, oil extracted in Alberta goes for market price. The only time that wasn't true was when the NEP was in place, and the Canadian government forced companies to sell product below market price in Canada.

The Texas oil cartel artificially cut the price of oil in this part of the world in undermining the NEP at a time when world oil prices were actually soaring. Texas energy companies boo-hoo'd to Warshington about Canada's NEP and Foreign Investment Review Agency that Uncle Sam's lapdog in Ottawa at the time, Brian Baloney, scrapped the two governmental agencies to accommodate America's big business interests in Canada's black gold and other valuable raw materials. It was a "free market" storm we could have weathered given a tiny amount of leadership and backbone in Ottawa and Calgary. The truth is out now that the U.S. is the most wasteful and energy consumptive nation on earth, and Canada should be more responsible in aiding America to curb its voracious appetite for our stuff instead of appeasing big business interests. Canada should see some benefit with our two old line parties stepping aside in allowing foreign corporations to dominate our economy and siphon off our unparalleled natural wealth untaxed. Instead, and after 100 years at the helm in Ottawa and provincial Queen's Parks, our two old line parties are providing us with unbalanced trade agreements - crisis after crisis with our hard-fought for social programs - humungous national debts since Mulroney-Chretien - bottom of the barrel child poverty rates in a comparison of developed nations and a net-loss of full time payroll job creation in this country when comparing 14 year spans before and after FTA in 1989. Our two old line parties, Liberals and Conservatives, have allowed Canada to become little more than a repository of natural wealth for marauding multinationals to raid at will. No other developed country has handed-off its economic sovereignty to foreign control like Ottawa and the provinces have. There are rich nations with far less natural wealth than Canada used to own before FTA/NAFTA - and those countries rank highly wrt economic competitiveness and in measures of social democracy. Instead, Canada aims to line the pockets of big business shareholders by pawning off Canada's family jewels and silverware at firesale prices.

To answer Sven's question, it's not a matter of market prices for oil - it's about seizing control of oil. Stealing the common from under the goose is the real "magic" of capitalism. Abra Cadabra! Not impressed you say?. Like Linda McQuaig says, It's the Crude, Dude. Our weak and ineffective leaders in Canada are selling us down the river. The truth about real oil reserves makes globalism based on widget capitalism the biggest lie of the century. Global choices will eventually become "socialism or barbarism." And paleoconservatives in the U.S. have already chosen.

[ 19 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
otter
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posted 20 August 2006 09:38 AM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Athabasca river has dropped some 8 [eight] feet or about 2 1/2 meters since the oil sands project began. The loss of this river and the contamination of the provinces norhern aquifers will be devasting to Alberta's fresh water supply.
From: agent provocateur inc. | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
jester
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posted 20 August 2006 12:27 PM      Profile for jester        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by otter:
The Athabasca river has dropped some 8 [eight] feet or about 2 1/2 meters since the oil sands project began. The loss of this river and the contamination of the provinces norhern aquifers will be devasting to Alberta's fresh water supply.

In high water,one can journey by boat on the Athabaska river to Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,down the Bear River to the MacKenzie River,out onto the Beafort Sea,Bering Strait and then the Pacific.


From: Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 20 August 2006 02:08 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ya, I read that one-quarter of the Athabaska River flow is dedicated to oil extraction from tar sands. At some point, we will have to guarantee foreign-based multinationals access to our water before our own needs are met and at "free market" rates.

from Hurtig's, The Vanishing Country, p. 113, 2002

quote:
David Manning, former head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says that Canadian Natural Gas is replacing coal or diesel in New York and Massachusetts power projects, with the result that undesirable emissions are falling, and "every bus on Long Island runs on Alberta natural gas." Countering criticism from concerned environmentalists, John Manley suggests that increasing exports of Canadian natural gas will displace dirtier coal in the U.S. and be good for the environment.

Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, the Alberta government has agreed to new coal-burning power plants to supply electricity for export to the U.S., and while most of Nova Scotia offshore natural gas flows to the U.S., the province imports expensive U.S. coal to power its electricity plants. ...

Don't worry about natural gas shortages in Canada, the industry tells us. We should export all we can - there's plenty more where that came from. But a "blue ribbon team of scientists" presented quite a different picture in fall 2001. New reserves are undoubtedly going to be more difficult to find and more expensive to produce. Reserves have dropped by ten years since an earlier study only four years ago(in 1998). Many natural gas pools may well be considered unmarketable.


Hmmm, sounds like a similar situation when Canada owned Husky Oil and all the most northern, deep seated and most expensive to drill-for offshore oil rights while Imperial and the rest siphoned-off the easily accessed crude for us at Leduc.

And now the Yanks are telling Dalton McGuilty that they won't mind if he builds nuclear power plants in our own backyard in order to meet our contractual obligations to supply them with even more electrical power. Keep it coming, they say. I guess American's themselves have no problem with building nuclear power plants in their states - it's just that we have free market obligations which hundreds of Ottawa lawyers signed us all up for and called it free trade several years ago. Mulroney and Chretien should have been lined up at dawn without blindfolds or cigarettes.

Attention international shoppers, everything in Canada is now up for grabs, Sunday to Saturday, 24/7 !!! It's a blowout sale!!!

[ 20 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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