REGINA – A full page ad by CUPE in Monday’s Leader-Post urging Saskatchewan residents to “Keep Water Public” has raised eyebrows in the Mayor’s office.
The ad pictures a young girl drinking tap water, and urges municipalities to keep key water infrastructure in public hands. This comes as Regina prepares to hold a referendum on the plan to use a P-3 funding model to pay for the city’s new waste water treatment plant.
“These are separate issues completely,” said Mayor Michael Fougere. “We’re talking about the sewage system here; we’re not talking about drinking water. Very different.”
The group that spearheaded the campaign to hold a referendum says it wasn’t aware CUPE was taking out the ad, but disagrees with the mayor’s assertion that waste water and drinking water are two separate issues.
“We live downstream from about 1-point-5 million people in Alberta, and some in western Saskatchewan. They’re all discharging their waste water into what becomes our water supply,” said Jim Holmes with Regina Water Watch. “Then, on the other hand, we discharge our waste water back eventually into the water systems for people in eastern Saskatchewan and Manitoba.”
CUPE has yet to respond to a request for comment from Global News. No date from the referendum has been set.
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