Companies need to remove secrecy over water samples

Companies need to remove secrecy over water samples

(Quebec) Want to know how many liters of bottled water are taken by companies to resell in Quebec? This is the secret.

Released at 6:19 p.m.

Patrice Bergeron
Canadian Press

Environmental organizations are approaching the court to raise the opaque screen, especially on the millions of liters of water collected by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Naya and Esco.

The Canadian press has reported that the case will be taken up for hearing on the 1st of next monthEr March.

This confidential information may refresh the debate over government-affected royalties, which are considered by the opposition to be the least important.

The commission has previously refused to release the information in the name of trade secrecy.

However, Eau Secours and the Quebec Center for Environmental Law (CQDE) oppose the decision in a Quebec court.

Transparency

“When people ask for access to information to get the amount of water taken in by large suckers, they are denied access, but for us, this is common sense, which is why we are in court.” Briefly by Mark Pishay, CQDE’s Associate Lawyer.

Plaintiffs believe that water law takes precedence over the principles of participation and transparency.

As a result, companies assume that citizens have a right to know the use of this resource, which is “important, deplete and vulnerable” as stated in the preamble to the law.

Accurate data are needed before the discussion on the possibility of withdrawal or pricing of this amount of water can begin.

“We can definitely have discussions on this question,” he agreed.

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“But upstream, before we even discuss it, we don’t even know how much water each company is taking. Upon receiving this information, we can have a number of intellectual discussions about water vulnerabilities, use discrepancies, appropriate royalties, and more. ⁇

Pricing

Last week, the Liberal Party and the party Quebecois demanded that the tariff for water use be revised upwards, with no change since 2010.

Coalition Avenir took action to review Quebec pricing, but Minister Benoit Charett refused to initiate the process as part of a review of Bill 102 currently underway.

The current phase is recognized as worse than Ontario.

In 2018, it was announced that 2 billion liters of bottled water in Quebec would bring in less than $ 150,000 to the Quebec Treasury. That same year, the Liberal MP claimed that Ontario had withdrawn 23 million gallons of water. Isabel Melancon noted.

The royalty rate is $ 2.50 per million liters of water, but $ 70 per million liters, for example, bottled water, beverages, certain minerals and chemicals, pesticides or oil and gas extraction.

By comparison, Italy needs $ 2,000 per million liters and Denmark $ 10,000 per million liters.

The Quebec Regulation, which values ​​the amount of water owed for use, applies to all industries that withdraw or use 75,000 liters or more of water per day.

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