Dear John B. Challinor II, director of corporate affairs, Nestlé Waters Canada:
Can you please tell us about Nestlé's water exploits in Mecosta County, Mich. and how this led to a debate on the privatization of a community's water? And do you refute the claims that Nestlé has been charged with stealing water from entire villages in India and South East Asia?
This cannot be dismissed as 'activist propaganda' because in Mecosta County, you were ordered out and Nestlé Waters appealed to the court to allow them to continue pumping water at a reasonable rate while the appeal was considered. What was this reasonable rate? 314,000 gallons a day. That is to say, 218 gallons a minute. Is this what you do all around the world?
Thanks for taking the time to dialogue with the community of St. Albert and for showing interest in the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development And Peace. Development and Peace has put Nestlé on the same list of organizations that steal from the poor, practice sweatshop labour, sell genetically modified organisms and bio-patented terminator seeds and steal water for illegal mining. Development and Peace has declared water to be a human right for all human beings and we denounce Nestlé's practice of making deals with village leaders and then militarizing natural water sources.
In further discrediting your public relations corporate musings, it is interesting to point out that you believe bottled water to be less than one per cent of the water we consume. With close to seven billion people in the world, one per cent of the water we drink would be one-100th of 7 billion people drinking water every day. Unfortunately, over two billion of these people don't have clean drinking water. This is the sin.
Julio C. Garcia, National Anglophone Youth Rep., Development And Peace, Edmonton
