The B.C. legislature is sending the wrong message by buying 7,200 bottles of water annually while the province’s public water systems battle the trend toward drinking bottled water, according to Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan.
“It’s absolutely frivolous waste,” Corrigan told the Georgia Straight. “It’s hard to believe.”
The legislative assembly recently signed a contract with Canadian Cascade Pure Water Company
to supply 25 cases per month of bottled water labelled “Parliament’s Choice”, according to company president Mike Millington. Each case contains 24 small bottles, mostly for the use of cabinet ministers, he said.
Speaking from the annual convention of the Union of B.C. Municipalities in Victoria, Corrigan said that he and other directors of the Greater Vancouver Regional District have been campaigning hard to draw attention to the waste involved in using bottled water.
“It shows how much [the government] pays attention to the GVRD,” he said. “I think people have to be very critical of an example being set like that,” Corrigan said. “Particularly, their environment minister [Barry Penner] should be pressing for the government to act responsibly and set an example for other people.”
Corrigan, who is also a member of the regional district’s water committee, said that if anyone wants cold water, they could simply put a container of tap water in the fridge. “I think members of the legislature can do the same thing,” he said.
His own office no longer buys bottled water, and pitchers of water are used at Burnaby council and committee meetings, Corrigan noted. “This is just so needless,” he added. “It’s kind of throwing affluence in people’s faces.”
Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson, a former MLA and deputy speaker, also questions the use of bottled water.
“What’s the matter with tap
water?” Stevenson asked the Straight. “Is it not good enough for them? These bottles are a huge environmental problem because millions of them around the world get discarded, and they’re not biodegradable. We should, as politicians and staff, be setting an example. If politicians and cabinet ministers shy away and run to bottled water, what does that say about our faith in our own water?”
He said if the issue had arisen while he was deputy speaker, he’d have called in scientific experts to present the evidence. “But if that didn’t work, then I’d certainly look at a ban,” Stevenson said.
Greater Vancouver Regional District spokesman Bill Morrell said that the district’s water is of “extremely good quality”. “If people are comfortable with paying 300 times more for a bottle of water than they would getting it out of the tap, then it’s the consumer’s choice,” Morrell told the Straight. He added that the district’s concern is that the empty bottles end up in landfill.
“If we can avoid that kind of additional waste, then that would be desirable,” Morrell said. “But then, the choice of a cabinet minister to drink bottled water, that’s his choice.”
Nils Jensen, who chairs the capital’s Regional Water Supply Commission, isn’t happy with the proliferation of bottled water.
“I think it’s a practice that ought to be discouraged for the simple reason that it can put pressure on our landfill,” Jensen told the Straight. “Although all the bottles are recyclable and can be returned for a deposit, many of them end up in landfill.”
The naive voter in last year’s provincial election could be forgiven for thinking that the B.C. Liberal government would share similar sentiments. After all, goal number four of the B.C. Liberals’ “five great goals for a golden decade” is to “lead the world in sustainable environmental management.”
Not that the legislative assembly need do what the government wants.
Until recently, cabinet ministers used water bottled by Canadian Springs, according to Canadian Cascade’s Millington. Then one day, legislature officials read the fine print and noticed that the water was actually from Quebec, he said, adding that the officials wanted a local supplier.
“They phoned me up and asked if I could provide them water,” Millington told the Straight. Canadian Cascade, based in the Victoria suburb of Langford, uses water from the regional district’s water supply, purified by reverse osmosis, he said.
However, starting next April 1, the B.C. government will be required to stop demanding that contracts (with the exception of small ones) go to local suppliers.
Under the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between Alberta and British Columbia, a public agency trying to help out the local economy in this way will face potential fines of up to $5 million, plus costs.
Naturally, the legislative assembly, not being a government, can do pretty much whatever it pleases. But one can’t help wondering about the reaction to the legislature’s water deal by cabinet ministers like economic development minister Colin Hansen.
Hansen, who signed the agreement on behalf of B.C. was quoted recently in this space enthusing about the Alberta–B.C. agreement, including the benefits of competitive bidding.