Many Canadians think that we don’t have a problem with drinkable water, but we do. Though Canada holds 7 per cent of the world’s fresh water, it is not immune to the global fresh water shortage. The lack of legalization to protect water and the imminent shortage of clean water both pose a pressing problem for the future.

“We have weak legislation protecting water,” Maggie* told The Daily. “Water legislation is a human right. We need to protect ecosystems and set mandatory limits on extraction for energy production. Setting limits would force these industries to innovate. We have no national water strategy. Every ministry, every industry, deals with water in a different way, so there’s no clear oversight on managing the whole system.”

This lack of integration across industries and fields also seems to prevent us from tackling our water issues in Montreal. In response to these issues, a group of eight women have met weekly since October to organize the fourth annual McGill Sustainability Symposium, which took place on March 13. The symposium focused on water and ways to sustain it, while fostering ideas and connections to address these pressing environmental challenges.

Pascale Biron, a geology professor at Concordia University, expressed the urgent need for a collective approach to manage our rivers. “One of the biggest problems with river management is that we don’t understand natural processes which explain why they erode [river] banks and why they flood regularly.” Biron said we could save millions of dollars over the next 50 years if we allow rivers to have their “freedom space,” meaning space to move naturally and flood.

We currently force rivers within a zone to ensure they don’t move, limiting the space for wetlands to play their natural role. This inevitability causes rivers to deteriorate, making them less valuable. “We keep doing things, because we’re used to doing them a certain way in the past. We need to look at the system with a new perspective – a multidisciplinary perspective,” says Biron.

But what if nothing changes and we continue along the path the same path?

“By 2050, there will be big questions to answer,” says Claude Demers, a private consultant and a previous employee at Hydro-Québec. “The issue is in the summer in Quebec, when it’s very, very hot; very few cubic metres of water are available in Southern Quebec rivers.” Regardless of the shortage in water, people continue to water their grass and fill their pools, further exacerbating the water shortage.

Demers informed The Daily that 90 per cent of people in Quebec live in the south, and most of these people don’t think about what their behaviours are doing to their surrounding environment. Demers goes on to say that while Quebec has advanced hydro technology, the problem is that “we have all of the eggs in one basket.” In Quebec, water is used for just about everything. According to Demers, 99 per cent of electricity is generated using water, and Quebecers are some of the largest consumers of electricity in the world.

“We keep doing things, because we’re used to doing them a certain way in the past. We need to look at the system with a new perspective – a multidisciplinary perspective.”

Pascale Biron, professor at Concordia University

This lack of knowledge is not limited to Quebec. Hanspeter Schreier, a professor at the University of British Columbia specializing in geomorphology and resource management, told The Daily how tragic he finds the way we value bottled water. Bottled water is sold at around $2 a bottle while the city’s fresh drinkable water is priced at 63 cents for every 1000 litres. “Bottled water has a high sodium and nitrate content, which passes food regulations, but would not pass health regulations. Bottled water that has been lying around at room temperature is a perfect specimen for bacteria to grow in, and unlike city water, it is not tested twice a day,” explained Schreier.

Schreier described current Canadian water laws as archaic with their “first in time, first in place” system where the first one to get the permit has water rights. These laws were implemented in the 1880s, and are long due for an update. He advocated for three immediate changes: low-flush toilets, saving and using rain water for outdoor use, and restoring pipe leakages in our city water systems.

Everyday reduction in water consumption is definitely possible, especially when our regular toilets flush 20 litres every time we use it. However, larger amounts of water are needed for other vital essentials, like agriculture, to maintain its mass production.

Greg Gerrits, a farmer who owns Elmridge Farms in the Sheffield Mills area of Nova Scotia, says he has experienced the government hindering farming progress while providing little help to develop a healthier practice. He informed The Daily that he had his water permit taken away in the 1990s. “There were two years in a row that were extremely dry so they decided that they couldn’t renew any permits. So the result was that our permits were left to expire for a year. When I went back to them the next year, they told me point blank that the application process would be difficult.”

Gerrits says he now spends most of his time in the office rather than out in the field. “I spend very little of my time actually farming to meet all of the government demands. They keep coming up with more demands and more record-keeping.”

According to Gerrits, farmers absorb all costs. “We are expected to compete dollar for dollar with the entire world when the environment is being destroyed. People who buy local are paying prices that are based on a world price that doesn’t reflect our Canadian-regulated cost of production.”

So the cost of our water in everyday consumption and in food production doesn’t seem to reflect its real value, which then in turn makes us reckless in how we use this water. It’s difficult to make people appreciate a free commodity. The question then becomes: how can we change people’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviours?

Schreier believes that humans will not change easily. “Only in crisis will there be change, that is the human way […] we almost need a good drought to change.”

*Name has been changed

The Daily had mistakenly named a source who stated they wished to be anonymous. The name has been changed to a pseudonym. The article had also previously had a quote from Maggie* stating “Canadians will have a big problem with water soon. We have one of the weakest legislations in protecting water. We don’t prioritize drinking water as a human right”. In fact, they said that “We have weak legislation protecting water.”The Daily regrets the error. 

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Le Portail Santé Montréal declined an interview, yet in a press release sent to The Daily, they state that this restriction will only affect new patients who have not yet started treatment. Patients who have already been admitted can stay with the doctor they have been seeing. Even though it is not certain whether new patients will be able to chose their hospital under some circumstances, Nathalie Rodrigue, President of the Coalition Priorité Cancer au Québec, an organization that rallies different groups in order to fight for more effective cancer treatment, is not so confident about it. “Nothing has been put in writing to guarantee this,” she said, “so the patients are still vulnerable. The Coalition is waiting to see what happens come April 1 and beyond.”

Getting specialized care close to their homes would definitely be more convenient for cancer patients, as it would keep them from having to take long daily trips to far-off hospitals; however, the specialized treatment cancer patients require is not available to the same extent at every hospital. “There are a myriad of treatments in cancer care that make it different from other kinds of care,” Jen Greig, a cancer patient, told The Daily in an interview. Greig was diagnosed with advanced lymphoma in 2008. She received treatment at Saint Mary’s Hospital, a smaller hospital in Montreal, and experienced the benefits of being treated in a familiar environment. “When you’re super stressed out, getting all sorts of weird procedures done to you, familiarity really helps reduce the experienced level of stress,” she said. Yet, being part of the old system, Greig was able to seek alternative advice from other hospitals, including the JGH in Montreal. She stated that Saint Mary’s Hospital couldn’t do a lot of things like stem cell harvesting and magnetic resonance imaging, which forced her to go to the JGH. Next to the transportation costs and time, Greig also expressed concern about “the psychological aspect of having to make so many trips to the hospital.”

Portail Santé Montréal specified that the $6 million in funding will be transfered to support hospitals in the Laval and Montéregie regions in their new radiation oncology cancer centres. In an interview with The Daily, Eduardo Franco, head of McGill’s oncology department, stated, “Decentralization of our services is a good idea, and I believe the government has the very best intentions. I’m quite wary, however, [about] how this plan may be rushed to implementation because of financial concerns. Inevitably, if change is rushed, the quality of services will be affected and the patient will be the one who suffers.”

“There will be a ripple effect of this dispersion of funding [that] may affect the quality of oncology doctors who graduate, the quality of teaching, the quality of treatment, the quality of specialty, the quality of care,” Franco continued. This decentralization of care might not be able to guarantee the same level of efficiency. He continues to explain that cancer treatment is one of the most expensive treatments one can receive, since it requires specialized teams for diagnosis, treatment, and follow up. Teams need to be all in one place, gain trust in each other’s competencies, and communicate with and rely on each other. Without this synergy, miscommunication is likely. After the allocation of funds, patients newly diagnosed with cancer, with limited time to get diagnosis and treatment, may end up unnecessarily running around to get the services they need.

Coalition Priorité Cancer au Québec opposes the decision to reallocate funds. “This decision is being made solely based on financial savings, when it should be ethically based on the quality of patient care,” Rodrigue told The Daily. “The patient will pay for this single-minded political decision.”
A transfer of funding from the major English-speaking hospitals to French-speaking ones might create difficulties in getting service for anglophones who live off the island of Montreal. A report by the Community Health and Social Services Network from last year states that English speakers comprise 13.4 per cent of Quebec’s total population, with 66.8 per cent of them residing in the Montreal-Laval region. A 2011 report by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec states that only 14.6 per cent of the 10,540 doctors, and 12.67 per cent of the nurses in Quebec, only use English at work. This makes it increasingly difficult for anglophones to access healthcare in English.

The new implications also parallel those of the Quebec charter. A group of McGill professors, psychiatrists, and researchers specializing in mental health published a letter against the Quebec Charter, stating that the JGH was built in the 1930s “because of systematic discrimination at major academic and healthcare institutions in Montreal.” Whether or not the current budget allocations may be an anti-anglo issue, decentralizing cancer care will probably result in not having the same level of expertise quality of care for cancer patients of different backgrounds.

Allocating $6 million in funds to the Laval and Montégerie hospitals from the JGH, Montreal General Hospital and other hospitals on the island most likely will have detrimental impacts for cancer care in the long run if the funds are not implemented carefully. Cancer care is specialized and highly complex. It needs a team of people who can easily communicate in their specialty to ensure the patient does not get lost in translation. Dispersion of resources and specialized care could have negative implications for patients and research. Cancer care requires the best training, best resources, and the best service, to provide the best care.

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The Mikado, a comic opera, is set in Japan. The choice of locale was made in order to covertly satirize British politics by disguising them as Japanese, as well as to poke fun at the Victorian fascination with Orientalism. Nanki-Poo (John Cook/Gabriel Campagne), the main character, a free spirit and musician who is repeatedly reminded of his lower social status throughout the play. He is courting the young and beautiful Yum-Yum (Dallas Chorley/Allegra Johnston), who is set – to Nanki-Poo’s dismay – to marry a high official, Ko-Ko (Nathaniel Hanula-James/Scott Cope).

Yum-Yum and her vain friends are essentially ‘flakes’ who relish all the attention they get. But while The Mikado’s younger characters tend toward the vapid, the older folks like Ko-Ko, the high-placed politician Pish-Tush (Michael Loewen), and the serious power tripper Pooh-Bah (Jonah Spungin) highly enjoy all the bowing, formalities, and extended conversations about their own importance. This medley of vacuous characters could hardly be called a winning combination for a progressive society.

Throughout the production, The Mikado keeps asking these questions we often hear about our own society in a fresh way. The women Gilbert and Sullivan portray are the end prize for the male characters, the members of the lower classes are strung along, and the important people make all their decisions based on loathing and self-interest.

Perhaps what makes this production brilliant is the adroitness the Savoy Society shows in keeping heavy issues lighthearted, in a way Gilbert and Sullivan themselves would have been delighted to witness. “It’s an enjoyable political satire,” points out the director, Cameron MacLeod. “There are storylines of seeking acceptance and finding love that are very human.” The Mikado serves as a hilarious and on-point satire, and a perceptive audience can savour the critique on multiple levels. The Mikado’s message still rings true, even in this mystical world of top hats and silk robes. The Savoy Society exposes our inability to escape our failings, showing us the tragic ease with which we give credit to the young, beautiful, and wealthy, even when no credit is due; just as we suffer the poisonous consequences of the self interest of politicians.

The Mikado is on February 20 to 22 at 7:30 p.m., and February 22 at 2:00 p.m., at Moyse Hall (853 Sherbrooke W.). Tickets are $12 for students.

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