Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Despite the apparent abundance of water in Canada, she said, low prices mean the best-quality water in many regions — such as Southern Ontario groundwater — is in increasingly short supply and is being overused. Roy Brouwer, executive director of the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, said that when he came to Canada from the Netherlands five years ago, he was surprised by the low price and wasteful misuse of water in this country.
With some of the highest municipal water rates in Canada, a University of Regina (U of R) researcher says the city should start thinking about affordability programs for low-income families. “The international benchmarks tell us we should be in trouble now, because people who are living at the Statistics Canada low-income cut off are already paying more than the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) says they should be paying,” Jim Warren said in an interview Thursday.
