This story, from the Globe and Mail, is over a year old but the headline still shocks me:

One trillion litres of sewage leaked into lakes and rivers over last five years

That’s right, one trillion litres. That’s 1,000,000,000,000 litres. That’s about the same as 400,000 official Olympic-sized swimming pools full of stinking raw sewage. StatsCan says that there are 5,000+ cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages and hamlets in Canada so that’s about eighty Olympic sized swimming pools filled with that smelly, dirty raw sewage dumped by every city, town and settlement over the past five years. But we know that many Canadian cities and towns have good, effective sewage tratment plants. But, even so, the article says that “Data provided by the federal government shows in 2017, municipalities reported 215 billion litres of raw sewage were spilled or leaked without being treated. Enough to fill 86,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, that represents an increase of 10 per cent over the amount reported five years ago … [that means that] … Over the last five years, the total amount is in excess of one trillion litres … [and he flow is increasing under the Justin Trudeau/Catherine McKenna regime, and] …  About two-thirds of the amount of reported in 2017 was purposely released when rains overwhelmed water systems that use a single pipe for both storm sewers and wastewater. When storms happen, the excess water can’t be handled by treatment plants and must be released into waterways to prevent basement backups.“

Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna tell us that we have to put a price of carbon to stave off climate change. They seem to believe that a carbon tax, an extra tax on heating our homes this winter, in Canada will solve the problem of an enormous number of coal-fired electrical plants in China and India and 270 Million motor vehicle on US highways and streets.

Andrew Scheer, on the other hand, promises to stop cities, like Victoria, BC, and Montreal, PQ, from dumping their raw sewage into our rivers and harbours.

Whose plan make more environmental sense to you? A new tax on heating your home or driving to work? Or a plan to clean up the water we drink? I’ve already voted and I voted for the candidate whose party proposes a sensible, achievable environmental plan.