March 5, 2008

IMPORTANCE OF SANITATION

World Water Day 2008 will be celebrated by the UN on Thursday, March 20. In 2008 the day will highlight issues on sanitation in accordance with the International Year of Sanitation 2008 People around the world are encouraged to celebrate the day, to draw attention to the world sanitation challenges.

In my constituency of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant hundreds of people do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, whether they’re homeless or living in substandard housing. They’re forced to use public facilities at community centres and libraries and are regularly harassed by private security.

Every day people are forced to defecate in the streets, brush their teeth outside, and they do not have the dignity of privacy that many of us take for granted. The idea that this situation exists in a world-class city like Vancouver, steps away from million-dollar condominiums, should be embarrassing to all of us as policy-makers.

Sanitation is the most important medical advance since 1840. According to a reader survey in the British Medical Journal, improved sanitation reduces cholera, worms, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition, amongst other maladies that cause disease and death in millions of people. Today 2.6 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.

Improved sanitation has positive impacts on economic growth and on poverty reduction. According to a recent WHO study, every dollar spent on improving sanitation generates an average economic benefit of $7. Without improving sanitation, none of the other millennium development goals to which the world has committed itself will be achieved.

I ask all members in this House to join me in expressing our commitment to both protect water resources for everyone and to meet our international obligations on sanitation standards for all of our citizens, regardless of economic status.