Like the forced water privatizations in the European Commission’s bailout packages for financially troubled EU member states, the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) would lock in a failed private model for water delivery and treatment. It would do this against the desires of Canadians and Europeans who are overwhelmingly opposed to private water.

The CETA proposals we’ve seen would also make it almost impossible for Canadian or European governments at any level to reverse privatizations when things go wrong, which they so often do. Investment protections in CETA, much like the standalone investment pact Harper just inked with China, will let private water companies enforce their right to profit through multi-million dollar lawsuits outside of Canadian courts.

Where we once expected the pressure to liberalize, or open up water services fully to private sector competition, to come from the EU and large European water companies, it’s now clear that Canada is equally to blame.

Leaked CETA documents and briefings from Canadian negotiators tell us the provinces are not asking to exclude water services or other municipally delivered public services from their investment commitments to the EU. European member states, on the other hand, want to preserve the EU’s blanket exemption for public services.

Canada’s negotiators say the EU exemption is too vague, even though it provides a much stronger defence against trade and investment challenges. As such, they are proposing only to protect existing public water monopolies, and to insert a throwaway line saying nothing in CETA shall be interpreted to force a community to privatize.

But once a municipality goes private, as the Harper government is encouraging our cities to do through public-private partnership (P3) funding conditions, there will be no going back if CETA is signed and ratified in its current form. This P3 hoop our cities must jump through is the Harper equivalent of the European Commission’s austerity budgets.

Liberalizing and privatizing water services is a longstanding goal of the European Commission but it is fiercely opposed by the public and many member states. Just this week the Council of Canadians signed a European civil society letter to the Commission asking that it “withdraws its demands and refrains from any further pressure to impose water privatization conditionalities on Greece, Portugal and any other EU member state.”

The Commission's crusade goes against the growing trend against privatization in Europe and around the world. Paris and many other cities have recently remunicipalized their once private water services due to bad experiences, from poor service to price overruns to accusations of collusion among the largest water companies. In 2004, the Dutch government passed a law banning private sector provision of water supply, and the Italian Constitutional Court has ruled that any future legislation attempting to privatize public services would be unconstitutional. 

Gabriella Zanzanaini of Food & Water Europe says the ongoing push to privatize “really demonstrates how the Commission has lost touch with reality... Their ideological arguments are not based on substantiated facts and goes to the extreme of ignoring the democratic will of the people.”

It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We think the Harper government and the provinces are also ignoring the will of the people by putting public water systems at risk in the CETA negotiations.

We have a new legal opinion by the Canadian Environmental Law Association on the difference between Canada’s existing trade commitments on water and those expected of us in CETA. It shows that the federal government is misleading us and the provinces on what needs to be done to fully protect water.

We have begun to share the CELA opinion with provincial negotiators and trade ministers. It urges them to reserve “the right to adopt or maintain any measure at any level of government with respect to services relating to the collection, purification and distribution of water to household, industrial, commercial or other users, including the provision of drinking water, and water management, and waste water management.”

In the absence of a strong, general exemption for public services, only this strong language will protect the right of our cities and provinces to reverse failed privatizations. Only a strong reservation will protect the right of municipalities to maintain, strengthen and properly regulate water and other local services, without fear of costly, secretive investment disputes.

It’s time we started thinking about CETA as another tool, alongside austerity budgets in Europe, to help corporations privatize our water services. We should take courage from European water warriors who have successfully fought off the Commission’s water privatization agenda. But let’s do it quickly before CETA is signed or risk undermining their project and our own right to protect and improve our cherished public water services.

I have just returned from a week in Switzerland to promote the right to water and to challenge the Swiss bottled water giant, Nestlé. My visit was arranged by Franklin Frederick, an activist and leader in the global fight against Nestlé Waters, who is originally from Brazil, but now lives and works in Switzerland. Franklin is an extraordinary man. He is fiercely committed to global water justice and has been a thorn in the side of the water privateers for years.

I also reconnected with Rosmarie Bar, a former Green Member of the Swiss Parliament and former senior member of the Swiss development network, Alliance Sud. Rosmarie and I worked together to form an international group called Friends of the Right to Water and worked for many years to lay the groundwork for the recognition of this right at the UN.

I spoke at the universities of Bern and Lucerne and in a beautiful 500-year-old church located in the heart of Bern. In the magnificent wood paneled Swiss Parliament, I also met with a delegation of MPs from every party who are committed to protecting public water and the human right to water. In all these venues, I met wonderful, committed people working for economic and social justice.

However, it is very clear that Nestlé is a powerful presence in Switzerland and its influence in the halls of power goes deep. Everyone I talked to said so in one way or another. Switzerland has no law limiting political donations from corporations, or requiring transparency in campaign financing. Given that the marketing department of Nestlé has a larger annual budget than the World Health Organization, it is widely understood that the company has great political influence.

Of special concern is the partnership that the Swiss Federal Agency for Development and Cooperation has entered into with the company. Nestlé is a charter member of the newly formed Swiss Water Partnership, along with civil society groups and aid agencies, that will advise the Swiss government on water policy in the Global South. The stated desire is to come to a set of “shared values” so that governments, NGOs and the private sector are promoting common policies and world views when giving aid money for water development, or what the SDC calls “speaking with one voice.” But what is this voice?

Nestlé was one of the first companies to commodify water. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, seeing what it did to the groundwater supplies of the surrounding regions, the company bought up huge quantities of mineral water deposits in Switzerland. Nestlé is the biggest bottled water company in the world and is scouring countries all over the planet for new supplies of water.

Nestlé has consistently promoted public-private partnerships whereby private water companies run water services on a for-profit basis. Company head Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, referred to often in the Swiss media as the “Water Man,” repeatedly promotes the full commodification of water (although after much criticism, now admits that the poor need some water too). He has proposed setting aside 1.5 per cent of the planet’s water for human rights, the rest going into the market. Nestlé also promotes GMO crops, which are voracious users of pesticides.

So these policies are the ones that the company will promote to the Swiss government in its development work. It is a travesty that this is the water face to the world of Switzerland. The country has one of the finest public water systems anywhere. SDC defends this partnership and publicly states that a key goal is to promote the interests of Swiss water companies abroad.

But what does Nestlé know about delivering water and sanitation services? Nothing! It is involved with this partnership to gain credibility and to have the Swiss government open doors to new private water markets in the developing world. It is the same reason the company is deeply involved with the funding arm of the World Bank. In fact, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe chairs a new advisory board called the 2030 Water Resources Group that helps set policy models and priorities for water and sanitation programs around the world.

This is a disaster in a world where demand for water is outstripping supply at an accelerating rate. As Wenonah Hauter from Food and Water Watch says, Nestlé’s goal is to shift government policy away from providing public municipal water supplies to people, and toward a dependency on bottled water to provide basic drinking water. And of course, it is about capitalizing on the global water crisis.

It is time to call out Nestlé and the governments that partner with them. I will return to Nestlé’s home base again soon where we will shout out against this malevolent water hunter.