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Immediate action must be taken to conserve Canada’s fresh water supplies, a group of western premiers and territorial leaders agreed Tuesday.
Premier Gordon Campbell joined his counterparts from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut for the two-day Western Premiers’ Conference at Vancouver’s Pan Pacific Hotel.
The leaders agreed to a Water Charter Tuesday that makes protecting the resource a priority. In the charter, leaders agreed that water is “an essential component of all life on Earth and there is no substitute” and that climate change has already affected the resource.
“The impacts of melting glaciers and decreasing snow packs and flood threats such as we are seeing right now in the Prairies are threatening the future of our fresh water supply,” said Campbell, after the meetings Tuesday.
Campbell said between 1985 and 2005, B.C. and Alberta glaciers have decreased by almost 11 per cent and Canada is ranked 29th out of 30 OECD countries for per capita water consumption.
“One of the biggest challenges may be changing our own habits,” he said.
The western leaders agreed to support a federal public awareness campaign called WaterSense, which will label products to help Canadians choose low water-use appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines.
Tuesday’s meeting builds on a 2008 agreement created by the premiers called the Western Water Stewardship Council, which was created to work toward lowering national and provincial consumption rates.
Campbell said the Western leaders will also work with public and private sectors to make the next World Water Day on March 22, 2011 a national event to promote water conservation.
Flooding in the Prairies was another issue on the table Tuesday, with premiers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba calling on the federal and provincial agricultural ministers to discuss support for farming communities hit by the floods.
“I toured just a small area of northeastern Saskatchewan yesterday and the damage is significant,” said Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. “Farm families are looking to their governments for support.”
Meantime, Campbell said he was pleased that federal and provincial finance ministers were making progress with a plan to reform the Canada Pension Plan, but he had to see all the details before taking a position. “The thing what I am concerned about is how do you provide people with the opportunity to provide for their long-term pensions? If people do not have that opportunity, then I think we have an obligation to try to provide that for them.”
Alberta is the only government strongly opposed to the federal Conservative government’s plan to expand the pension plan, arguing that increasing CPP contributions is akin to a tax on small business.
“I think there is an agreement across the board that it should not be inter-generational wealth transfer. It should be reforming payments to allow people to provide for themselves in the future,” said Campbell.
Campbell also chairs the conference at a time when his government is facing criticism over the wildly unpopular harmonized sales tax, or HST, which begins July 1.