Groups Gather in Barrie for the Love of Water, with Stern Words for Officials

Organizers from First Nations and three large environmental groups gathered on Barrie Waterfront, Sunday afternoon to celebrate water and demand it be better protected by the Ontario government. The groups and the thirty people gathered with them called on Barrie MPP’s Andrea Khanjin and Doug Downey to use their power to enhance water protections in Ontario. They encouraged anyone else who has the power to protect water across the province to use their voice, positions, and connections to be a voice for water.

Becky Big Canoe, a member of Georgina Island and the leader of the Water Is Life Coalition, started the event off with a water ceremony, making traditional offerings to the lake. While doing so she shared that children on Georgina Island, like people all around Lake Simcoe, have experienced symptoms after swimming in Lake Simcoe. “That’s what they want to do most on the Island, is go swimming, and these days they can’t do that all the time, because of the bacteria and the algae.” Sharing her experience as an elder, she shared, “In my many years of doing Water Walks I have seen that water brings us together. We learn from the water, if we can listen.”

Claire Malcolmson, Executive Director, Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition shared the perspective that Lake Simcoe is the poster child for water issues in Ontario, both good and bad. “On the bad side,” she said, “it’s the poster child because it suffers from what we are doing to the land writ large. On the good side, it’s the poster child of what CAN be done when people demand better, and when governments listen, and take action. Right now, we need the province to stop their mad sprawl agenda, get that phosphorus pollution control plant built, and stop the Bradford Bypass.”

Dani Lindamood, the Programs Director at Water Watchers took a larger, Ontario view, while sounding the alarm about the issue of salt pollution. “Our rampant use of salt in this Province is causing serious, chronic, and rising salt pollution in Ontario freshwaters, making the waters unswimmable, undrinkable, and unlivable. We see this in the Grand River which has surpassed safe ecological thresholds for the last several years. We see this in drinking water sources from Sudbury to Waterloo where municipal staff and officials are frantically trying to figure out how to stop salt pollution. Salt pollution is killing endangered and threatened species who call these freshwater ecosystems home. The use of winter salt is also causing damage to and diminishing the lifetime of essential infrastructure like roads & bridges, increasing our use of raw materials, costing the earth and taxpayers.”

Mike Balkwill, of the Small Change Fund spoke to one of the underlying, and systemic problems affecting water: its commodification. “Water bottling and gravel extraction companies are vampires,” he opined. “They seek endless profit, and they will continue until their “host” is dead. Their “host” is water, and we need water, for ever, for all life.”

Tori Cress, from G’Chimnnising, or Beausoleil First Nation, shared a hard hitting message about European / North American culture and consumption habits: “First Nations people have been telling those willing to listen: your so-called modern ways of living, of consumerism, is destructive and unsustainable. Natural law shows us that you cannot take, take, take without repercussions. Mother Earth will and is balancing herself out, with or without humans. Water shows us that everything is connected in the natural world, including people. Traditional Ecological Knowledge Holders continue to show us that the path forward starts with, and on, the land. Indigenous Science is hope for future generations. Even though Indigenous Peoples only make up 5% of the world’s population, there’s plenty of room for everyone to learn how to better live balanced lives on this incredible planet that continues to provide. It takes everyone to care for our first mother, the Earth, and the life sustaining water we all rely on.”

Noting that Southern Ontario had already lost more than 70% of its wetlands, by 2002, Katie Krelove, Wilderness Committee, Ontario Office described how Ontario’s protective wetland policies have been weakened.

“Wetlands are critical carbon stores to mitigate climate change, and with increasingly intense and extreme precipitation events, wetlands are more essential than ever to reduce and mitigate flooding. Despite their immense value, provincial protections for Ontario’s watersheds and wetlands are being stripped away, seemingly to facilitate development at any cost, in all the wrong places.”

Some examples of wetland protections the current government has stripped:

• The abandonment of the Provincial Wetland Conservation Strategy to achieve net gain of wetlands by 2030;
• A drastic increase in the powers of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to override protections for wetlands in the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) and issue Ministerial Zoning Orders for development;
• The gutting of the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System for designating Provincial Significant Wetlands making it much more difficult for wetlands to attain protections, with no ministry oversight on the evaluations;
• Undermining of the role of Ontario’s Conservation Authorities and their watershed-based expertise to contribute to development and planning decisions.

Water Watchers’ Dani Lindamood summed up the sentiment of the assembled: “Despite the evidence of worsening water quality and the action of tens of thousands of Ontarians begging our leaders to act on water issues, decision-makers like Andrea Khanjin and Doug Dowine continue to double down, saying what their Ministries are doing is enough. Well I’m here to set the record straight. The science is clear and water quality doesn’t lie – what you’re doing is not enough. Water quality continues to deteriorate under your leadership, but it doesn’t have to.”