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Formation | 1985 |
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Type | citizen's organization based in Canada |
Legal status | active |
Purpose | advocate and public voice, educator and network |
Headquarters | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
Region served | Canada |
Official language | English, French |
Website | canadians |
The Council of Canadians is a Canadian non-profit organization that advocates for clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and democracy. [1] The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario with regional offices in Halifax, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver and a network of local chapters across the country. [2]
While primarily focused on national issues, the Council of Canadians also does international work through its Blue Planet Project, [3] which focuses on the implementation of the human right to water and sanitation.
The Council of Canadians was founded in 1985 in the lead up to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and North American Free Trade Agreement. The Council criticized these and other international free trade agreements on civic nationalist and protectionist grounds, asserting that decision-making power about Canadian economic, cultural, and environmental policy should remain in Canada. The Council later expanded its focus to include campaigns on health care, water, public pensions, corporate influence, and energy. [4]
The Council was created by Mel Hurtig. The founding members included Maude Barlow, Margaret Atwood, David Suzuki, Farley Mowat, Pierre Berton, Margaret Laurence, several politicians and other prominent Canadians. [5]
In 2012, $202,000 was transferred from the Council of Canadians to the Maude Barlow Social Justice Fund Account. [6] [7]
The Council publishes a magazine called Canadian Perspectives, which is published twice a year. [8]
For the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the Council received 92 percent of its funding from members and supporters who gave an average of $54.59. [9] An additional seven percent of the annual budget came from foundation grants. [10]
The Council of Canadians receives no money from governments or corporations. However, it makes no such claims with regards to funding it receives from organizations such as labour unions or environmental activist groups. [1]
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Due to its overt political activities, the Council of Canadians does not qualify as a registered charity in Canada. [11]
In 2011, the Council of Canadians backed a lawsuit brought by a group of voters against the Conservative Party of Canada over the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal. Ultimately the voters lost the lawsuit and decided not to appeal the decision to a higher court. [12]
In September 2016, the organization launched a boycott of Nestlé in response to the company outbidding a small town aiming to secure a long-term water supply through a local well, stressing the need for bottled water industry reform as the country battles drought and depletion of ground water reserves. [13] [14] [15] [16]
The Council of Canadians will frequently advocate on behalf of unions, such as the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, involved in labour disputes. [17]
On November 20, 2014, Brigette DePape, a Vancouver-based organizer with the Council of Canadians, was arrested with over 14 others by the RCMP at Burnaby Mountain while protesting against Texas-based Kinder Morgan over the company's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. The protestors were arrested for "civil contempt” of a court order permitting the company's pipeline survey work. [18] All charges were subsequently dismissed. [19]
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by a group of environmental activists. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, anti-war and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, advocacy, research, and ecotage to achieve its goals.
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver. The 170-hectare (420-acre) main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 30,000 students and 160,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education across Canada.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba. Negotiations to establish the FTAA ended in failure, however, with all parties unable to reach an agreement by the 2005 deadline they had set for themselves.
Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. It has been the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 2014. It ranked No. 64 on the Fortune Global 500 in 2017. In 2023, the company was ranked 50th in the Forbes Global 2000.
Bottled water is drinking water packaged in plastic or glass water bottles. Bottled water may be carbonated or not. Sizes range from small single serving bottles to large carboys for water coolers.
Perrier is a French brand of natural bottled mineral water obtained at its source in Vergèze, located in the Gard département. Perrier is known for its carbonation and its distinctive green bottle.
Patrick Cyril "Sid" Ryan is a Canadian labour union leader and politician. Ryan is the former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
Peter S. Julian is a Canadian Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party (NDP), representing the riding of New Westminster—Burnaby. He was first elected in 2004.
Maude Victoria Barlow is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member and former board chair of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works internationally for the human right to water. Barlow chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch, serves on the Board of Advisors to the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature, was a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and was a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. She is the Chancellor of Brescia University College at Western University. In 2008/2009, was Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Tony Clarke is a Canadian activist.
Jean Swanson is a Canadian politician, anti-poverty activist, and writer in Vancouver, British Columbia. She represented the left-wing Coalition of Progressive Electors on Vancouver City Council as one of Vancouver's 10 at-large city councillors from 2018 to 2022.
A hot stain is a region of the world where safe drinking water has been depleted. The term may have been coined by Goldman Environmental Prize winning hydrologist Michal Kravcik. Hot stains can be found on every continent, except for Antarctica. The biggest reason for a hot stain to develop is population pressure. As the population grows, water demand increases. Although the earth is covered in 97% water, only 1% of that water is available for human consumption. Hot stains can cause great harm to a regions agricultural ability and can lead to food scarcity, famine, and even the abandonment of the region.
Water on the Table is a Canadian documentary film directed, produced and written by filmmaker Liz Marshall. The film explores Canada's relationship to its freshwater resources and features Canadian activist Maude Barlow in her pursuit to protect water from privatization. Counterbalancing Barlow's views are those of policy and economic experts who assert that water is a resource and a commodity like any other.
Nestlé Waters is a Swiss multinational bottled water division of Nestlé. It was founded in 1992.
BlueTriton Brands, Inc. is an American beverage company based in Stamford, Connecticut. A former subsidiary of Nestlé, it was known between 2002 and 2021 as Nestlé Waters North America, Inc. and operated as the North American business unit of Nestlé Waters. It produces and distributes numerous brands of bottled water across North America including Arrowhead Water, Deer Park Spring Water, Ice Mountain, Pure Life, Splash, Ozarka, Poland Spring, and Zephyrhills.
Edward Charles Kennedy Stewart is a Canadian academic administrator and politician who served as the 40th mayor of Vancouver from 2018 to 2022. He previously was the member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Burnaby—Douglas (2011–2015) and Burnaby South (2015–2018), serving in the House of Commons as a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP) caucus.
Brigette DePape, born 1989, is a Canadian activist from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who was a Canadian Senate page when she disrupted the throne speech in 2011 with a silent demonstration in the Senate of Canada. She has protested other events as well, causing her to be arrested in 2014.
Lynne Quarmby is a Canadian scientist, activist, and politician. She is a professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. She was a candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Burnaby North—Seymour in the 2015 federal election, and is the Green Party of Canada's Science Policy Critic.
Liz Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. Since the 1990s, she has directed and produced independent projects and been part of film and television teams, creating broadcast, theatrical, campaign and cross-platform documentaries shot around the world. Marshall's feature length documentaries largely focus on social justice and environmental themes through strong characters. She is known for The Ghosts in Our Machine and for Water on the Table, for which she also produced impact and engagement campaigns, and attended many global events as a public speaker. Water on the Table features water rights activist, author and public figure Maude Barlow. The Ghosts in Our Machine features animal rights activist, photojournalist and author Jo-Anne McArthur.
The Trans Mountain Pipeline System, or simply the Trans Mountain Pipeline(TMPL), is a multiple product pipeline system that carries crude and refined products from Edmonton, Alberta, to the coast of British Columbia, Canada.