I was stunned after reading this March 28, 2008 story from Canwest News Service; “UN rejects water as basic human right. Canada’s Harper government can declare victory after a United Nations meeting rejected calls by Germany and Spain for water to be recognized as a basic human right.”
Appalled, “the Council of Canadians, a social advocacy group said that the position was designed to protect the right to sell water under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement…about every eight seconds, a child somewhere in the world is dying from dirty water, and it's just shocking that our government has taken this position."
It shouldn't surprise you that Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a conservative. True to the ideology, he advocates protections for industries such as those that might want to sell the luxury commodity, water.
Again, the UN has rejected the idea that water be recognized as a basic human right, thanks to those profit minded conservative governments concerned with leaving open any future cash generating industries.
I was right to question the logic of buying bottled water. As it turns out, we were just being conditioned to except water as a product that needed marketing and a suggested retail price, not something that was a basic human right.
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