TheBulletin.ca Journal of Downtown Toronto
Frank Touby —
It’s hard to boycott Nestle, the horrid corporation whose despicable president decreed that access to water “should not be a public right.” In the mind of that evil character, it’s proper that his corporation should prosper by charging you for the necessities of life even when they’re part of the landscape.
So you think you can just quit buying the crap Nestle sells…mostly junkfood and sugar-crammed nutritional damage. Like an evil clown the corporation has disguises.
Here’s a partial rundown courtesy of Taodhg at http://torontothebetter.blogspot.ca/
Pure Life, Vittel, S,Pellegrino, Perrier… Take a close look at the branad name on the label of your next bottle of drinking water. All the above names spell one thing: their producer is none other than Nestle and you may have heard about them recently. It may be you’ve just paid for something that as a citizen of Ontario is rightfully yours anyway. In our current long period of austerity and government withdrawal from economic responsibilities from at least the 1980’s it comes as no surprise that governments continue to sell off public assets and/or rent them for prices that the market, the neo-liberal criterion for all things bright and beautiful, would reject. The Ontario government’s recent virtual give away of key water resources at Aberfoyle, near Guelph, Ontario to beverage giant Nestle is a shock only because of the scale of its public generosity to private interests.Is it too much to expect that the benefits of Canada’s resources best serve social, rather than private, good as a real social economy requires they should?
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The reality of another gutless public regime withdrawing from its duty to best protect our common heritage is depressingly at one with mainstream policy by many western political parties in these times of self-imposed austerity. If nothing else, the virtual giveaway of Ontario water to Nestle should ignite long shell-shocked public indignation and awaken a move to “repatriate” our common resources from the marketplace. Maintaining our waterways free of pollution is key, but ensuring our birthrights serve the long-term public interest is fundamental to a progressive politics dedicated to the common good.
