Infrastructure Meeting tonight to promote public ownership of water treatment services

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SAINT JOHN - A meeting to promote publicly financed, owned and operated water treatment services will take place at the Saint John Arts Centre, 20 Hazen Ave., at 7 p.m. tonight.

Called Paint the Town Blue, the meeting is sponsored by the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Union of Public Employees and will feature a talk by Meera Karunananthan, national water campaigner for the council of Canadians, followed by a question and answer session.

"It will also focus on all the problems with bottled water," said Danielle Savoie of CUPE, who is helping to organize the talks in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

It's a follow-up to the tour undertaken in 2007 by Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, Savoie said.

The current tour is part of a six-city event that began in Halifax on April 29 and will finish in St. John's, N.L., on Thursday.

"It's really to see if Saint John can become a blue community," Savoie said.

When Ivan Court campaigned for mayor last year he said he was opposed to public-private partnerships. But in January he said he is willing to review all options for securing money to build new treatment plants. However, he remains committed to ensuring the ownership and distribution of the city's water supply stays in public hands.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees remains opposed to public-private partnerships involving water treatment, Savoie said.