A number of issues were tackled at the Strengthening the Great Lakes Commons summit, held in Flint, Michigan.
One of the speakers at the summit held on Friday and Saturday, Emma Lui, is a water campaigner with the Council of Canadians. She says the goal of the summit is to focus attention on the issue of Nestle's water-taking both in Southern Ontario and Michigan. She also touched on the critical situations in Flint with the lead poisoning there and the cut-offs in Detroit.
Lui says the huge profits made by companies like Nestle's, on the water they take out of the Great Lakes isn't an issue at this conference. However, she says the concern is the commodification and privatization of water. Lui adds, aside from the problems in Michigan, Ontario has its own problems with indigenous communities that don't clean drinking water while companies like Nestle's can take the water and ship it out of some of the communities that need it.
Lui says they hope the summit will help educate and inspire residents living around the Great Lakes about the human right to water and how that's being threatened by companies like Nestles taking that water shipping all over the world.
“So in Detroit and Flint people are struggling with water but it's also indigenous communities as well," says Lui. "So it has more to do about not letting bottled water companies like Nestles take the water, sell it at a profit and then ship it out of communities so that people in those communities don't have access to water.”