By Sarah Wallace

World Water Day in PA celebrated with film screening

Mar 22, 2013 | 6:22 AM

March 22 is World Water Day and in its honour, Prince Albert’s John M. Cuelenaere Library is teaming up with the local chapter of the Council of Canadians and Cinema Politica to show the documentary Water on the Table on Friday.

There will a representative from the city of Prince Albert speaking before the film, along with speakers from Idle No More, members of Renewable Power: The Intelligent Choice and Labour and Food Secure Saskatchewan.

Nancy Carswell, a member of the Council of Canadians, said the documentary “is a character-driven, social issue documentary by Liz Marshall that explores Canada’s relationship to its freshwater, arguable its most precious natural resource.”

“World Water Day this year focuses on cooperation as its theme and this film in particular is going to highlight the fact that although were in Canada, everybody shares the same resource. So we have to be very careful about how we cooperate together,” Carswell said.

She said if we allow control of our waters, as in letting companies to extract huge amounts of water, making the water un-potable, it’s going to affect other things around the world.

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In Canada, she said that near the Great Lakes, a water company extracted so much water that cottages and farms in the area don’t have the water levels they used too.

Carswell said they “want to have people recognize the need to make water a human right, so that it no longer can be removed from the commons the way it is currently being removed, for example, the millions of gallons of water that are taken out of the Athabasca for the tar sands.”

In that situation, she said, you could argue that there is a natural cycle of purification but Mother Nature may not be able to replenish the ponds near Athabasca fast enough through the natural process.

“That water is being contained right behind these walls and it is leaking into the Athabasca I believe. If we allow the company to just do that we’re infringing on the rights on all of the inhabitants of that river.”
Carswell feels that water is going to become the new gold.

The documentary will be shown at the library at 7 p.m. , with no cost to watch.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid