During the week of June 18th,City Council will be making a major decision on the future of Toronto's water and wastewater system. Worth an estimated $19 billion, this system delivers water to Toronto residents that well exceeds provincial standards. Our water is tested 300,000 times every year, and has a highly skilled and efficient workforce ensuring its quality. The City has developed a comprehensive stormwater management plan to deal with run-off and overflows, and continues to upgrade its sewage treatment facilities with state of the art technologies.

What's broken? What needs to be fixed?

The Mayor and certain Councillors argue that we can not undertake the rebuilding of our water infrastructure without a full restructuring of how our water system is run. Last August, Mayor Lastman set the stage by announcing that turning the city's sewer and water department into a public utility would save $110 million through contracting out the operations. In October, staff moved forward with a recommedation to study how best to accomplish this through either a commission or separate corporation. For the past 7 months, staff has undertaken a form of consultation with the residents of Toronto in trying to convince us that we need a complete reorganization of our water and waste/ water systems.

The "Utility Study" presented us with three different models for delivering water. Option #1 (keeping the status quo or a modified status quo) is the only one that is really acceptable. The other two options (Municipal Services Board or a Public Utility Corporation) both start us down the road to privatization of our water and wastewater systems. On Friday May 31s., the City's staff finally announced their preferred option– a Municipal Services Board. None of us were surprised.

Toronto WaterWatch, a community/labour coalition determined to protect public control and high standards, has been leading the fights against this massive con game.. In the City's own consultation process, City staff heard loud and clear from residents don't touch our water. Environmental organizations explained very clearly the implications of Justice O'Connors findings from Walkerton, as well as the potential impact of GATS rulings if the Mayors wishes are followed. In fact the Toronto Star after listening to a delegation from Water Watch told the City in a lead editorial to leave our water and waste water systems alone. The Star stated clearly there is no ‘business case' for changing how we deliver water and wastewater.

The City's water advocate is trying to stop this mad rush to privatization. Councillor Irene Jones heard from 200 angry residents on June 4th that they don't want to see any changes. No delegate or affiliate should be under any illusions about where this issue is going. We have to pull out all the stops to make sure that the City does not give away our water and wastewater systems. Multinationals such as United Water and Suez Lyonnaise want to run our system and are ready to take it over. Delegates need to remember under NAFTA once we have lost control we can't get it back.

There is a lot of work that still needs to be done:

1) On June 18th, join hundreds of residents and come to City Council and make our voices heard.
2) It is essential we get our members to call their City Councillors.

The Mayor wants this to set up this water and waste water commission–he is fully committed to some form of privatization. This is a Queen's Park agenda that his office is trying to impose. It is our job to stop it--if we don't we will wake up and find our water system run by a multinational corporation and we would have lost control of our most precious resource.