Comfortable in its affluent, secure, and luxurious ivory tower, the Canadian government believes millions of people don’t deserve to have the same necessities of life as most Canadian citizens.
Canada’s United Nations representatives — who are directed by the federal government — abstained from voting on a resolution declaring that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right.
Apparently they don’t believe that “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation (is) a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.”
That’s a despicable position, given that most Canadians get all the clean water they could possibly need by simply turning on a tap, and “sanitation” is dealt with at the push of a lever.
We have so much clean water, available so cheaply, we use it to keep our front lawns green in the summer, to wash just about anything whenever we want — and think nothing of wasting gallons of water in things like swimming pools and landscape features.
We’re water-affluent and water-wasteful in a way that would horrify people in other countries, and yet our government can’t even support a non-binding UN resolution that states an obvious truth about the need for water to survive.
According to UN figures, about 1.5 million children under age five die each year from water and sanitation-related diseases. Around the world, 884 million people have no access to safe drinking water, and more than 2.6 billion don’t have access to basic sanitation.
In some central African countries, getting water is an all-day activity: women walk from their village for miles to a stream or creek, fill up large jugs with as much as they can possibly carry, and walk miles back home. Water is heavy — this daily trek provides enough perhaps for some basic uses, drinking, cooking and essential cleaning.
And in some places, the water people get by this arduous physical labour is far below the cleanliness standards governing our tap water. (Which despite its availability we often don’t deign to drink because it isn’t as “nice” as the bottled water we can conveniently buy everywhere.)
The UN resolution urged the world to “scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all.”
That may be at the root of the problem. Approving the resolution may seem to commit Canada to helping provide cheap water — perhaps even giving some of our own precious supply — to needy countries. Or to our own First Nations population living with poor water and sanitation systems.
But it’s hardly a real worry. The resolution isn’t binding — it’s a mere statement of intent, a symbol that shows countries are committed to helping in an area where change is drastically needed.
Apparently we’re not willing to do even that much.
More telling is that we fell in line with a similar abstention by the U.S. — continuing to slavishly “align” all aspects of Canadian policy with big brother to the south.
One concern mentioned was that the U.N. resolution may undermine later attempts by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council to create a consensus on water rights.
In common language: Voting today for a U.N. resolution that states everyone has the right to safe, clean, and affordable water, means it’s going to be difficult in the future to enshrine protection of water-rich countries’ and water companies’ rights to make vast profits selling clean water to desperate consumers.
It’s appalling to think that Canada, once the champion of human rights and the friend of the developing world, has become just another American-style corporate lackey.