by Roberta Cory
Open Cinema packed the Victoria Event Centre for the Canadian premiere of the documentary film, Flow: For Love of Water.

The audience for this Earth Day celebration was energized and motivated by the courageous people interviewed in the film and by the efficacy of the low-tech, community-based, ingenious solutions providing safe drinking water to thirsty communities.

When private corporations move into poor countries to provide drinking water, they buy up the source water, use expensive technologies, and, in order to bring a quick profit to their stockholders, sell it back to the very poor at a price they cannot afford. As water is necessary for life, the poor have no choice but to drink from any free, polluted and deadly water source they can find.

The types of solutions proposed by the Fraser Institute, as cited in Nigel Hannaford's April 22 column (Times Colonist), will only lead to a wider gulf between the rich and the poor, desecration of fragile and diminishing natural resources, and ultimately to war, since water means life itself.

I urge everyone to see Flow and start to think creatively about local, sustainable solutions to the many environmental problems we will face in our future.

Roberta Cory is an artist and a member of the Council of Canadians


The Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition is proud to have co-sponsored the Western Premiere of FLOW, a fundraiser for VIDEA's "Breakthrough for Africa" project.