The Council of Canadians has released five videos that outline the public advocacy organization’s priorities for the 2008 federal election.

The videos feature Maude Barlow, national chairperson for the COC, and target Stephen Harper and the Conservative government for their alleged mishandling of a range of issues. Among other policies, the COC takes aim at Harper’s centralization of power and the Conservative’s efforts on continental integration. The effectiveness of a Tory response to a failing global economy is also questioned.

One video delivers an impassioned case for making water conservation an election issue.

“Seven states in the American Midwest are runnig out of water,” Barlow notes. “On the Canadian side, this means that we are going to have a thirsty U.S. looking to Canada for water, sooner or later.”

She continues, “Because of NAFTA, this would mean that we would lose control of our water....I want this to be an election issue.”

Barlow’s 2007 book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, which studied the state of the world’s fresh water, found that the limited resource is quickly being depleted, and concluded that if conflict over water is to be avoided, it must be defined as a human right.

As long ago as September 2007, Liberal party leader Stéphane Dion called for the creation of a task force for the protection of Canada’s water from bulk water exports. NDP MP Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster) has also long fought against the sale of Canada's fresh water to the U.S.

Another of the COC’s election videos asks that Canadians “don’t let Harper near the economy again”.

Watch all five of the COC’s videos on its Web site.