Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy organization with 65,000 members. She was a founding member of the Council in 1985, and has served as its voluntary chair since 1988. During these years, the Council of Canadians has become a leading voice in Canada and around the world for social, environmental and economic justice. The Council fights to protect Canada's public social programs, natural resource heritage, and food security. It also advocates for fair trade and sustainable economic policies, in Canada and around the world, and promotes a peacekeeping role for Canada's armed forces..   

Maude Barlow is also a founding board member of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), a San Francisco-based think-tank made up of international activists, scholars, writers and economists dedicated to creating sustainable alternatives to economic globalization. She is a contributing author to the highly acclaimed IFG report, Alternatives to Economic Globalization, which has been studied by scholars and politicians around the world. In 1997, she led a global fight with other members of this group to defeat the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a proposed global treaty that would have given transnational corporations immunity from nation-state laws. Maude is also a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council that brings the interests of future generations to the centre of policy making.

Maude is an acknowledged leader in the international water justice movement, often called the "Al Gore of water." She founded the Blue Planet Project, a Council of Canadians project that works with grassroots groups around the world to stop the commodification of the world's fresh water resources. She is a founding member of Friends of the Right to Water, a North-South Coalition seeking a UN Convention on the Right to Water. Maude is currently chairperson of the board of Food and Water Watch, the foremost U.S. organization fighting for the right to water. In 1998, she wrote a ground-breaking analysis on the global politics around water for the International Forum on Globalization and is the co-author of the 2002 book, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World's Water, which is now published in over 40 countries and 15 languages. Her newest book, Blue Covenant, The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, published in 2007, is also an international best seller. In 2008, Maude wrote Our Water Commons, a report for a new international network to promote water as a global commons. Maude's work on this issue has taken her to every continent where she stands with local indigenous and community groups to defend their right to water.

Before founding the Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow was a leader in the women's rights movement in Canada. In 1975, she co-founded a consultancy group that worked at every level of government to promote equality for women. In 1980, Maude became the Director of Equal Opportunity for the City of Ottawa and in 1983, Maude became the Senior Advisor on Women's Issues to then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau; in this capacity, she advised the Prime Minister directly on all aspects of national equality initiatives for women.

Maude is the bestselling author or co-author of 16 books and is a frequent contributor to many journals, textbooks and magazines. She is an internationally sought speaker who has presented all over Canada and the world. She has won numerous high level awards from teachers' federations across Canada for her contribution to education and social justice and is the recipient of honorary doctorates from ten universities (Memorial, Victoria, Lakehead, Western, Mount Alison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Nipissing, Trent and Carleton in Canada and Mount Aloysius in the U.S.).  

Maude Barlow was one of the "1000 Women for Peace" nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. In the same year, she received the prestigious Lannon Cultural Freedom Fellowship as well as the Right Livelihood Award. Known as the "Alternative Nobel" and given by the Swedish Parliament, the Right Livelihood Award cited her "exemplary and long-standing worldwide work for trade justice and the recognition of the fundamental right to water." She also won the Citation of Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Canadian Environmental Awards and the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, Canada's highest environmental honours.

In 2008/2009, Maude served as the Senior Advisor on Water to Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly. On Mother Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Maude addressed the UN General Assembly and called for a global plan of action on water based on the principles of watershed protection, public trust and the right to water.

• 7. Education

• 6. Women's Issues

• 5. Canada-US Relations

• 4. Health Care

• 3. Trade

• 2. Globalization

• 1. Water issues (National and International)

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  October 2007

  Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

  Dubbed “Canada’s best-known voice of dissent” by the CBC, Maude Barlow has proven herself again and again to be on the leading edge of issues Canadians care deeply about. In Blue Covenant, Barlow lays out the actions that we as global citizens must take to secure a water-just world — a “blue covenant” for all.

  
  
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  October 2005

  Too Close For Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America

  In Too Close for Comfort, Maude Barlow walks us through the implications and consequences for Canada’s sovereignty and shows us how many of the values we hold dear and which tie us together as a nation would be undone. Chillingly, she also shows us how much we have already lost through such policies as the proportional energy-sharing agreement of NAFTA, and she reveals how deep integration could be used to pry open key Canadian policies such as our public health system.

  
  
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  October 2003

  Profit Is Not the Cure: A Citizen's Guide to Saving Medicare

  In Profit Is Not the Cure, Maude Barlow traces the history of medicare in Canada. She compares it with both public and private systems in other parts of the world. And she contrasts it with the brutally divisive system that exists in the United States, where forty-four million people have no medical insurance, and millions more get minimal care through profit-driven health maintenance organizations.

  
  
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  March 2003

  Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of World's Water

  In this international bestseller, currently available in more than a dozen countries, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke describe the real and worsening global water crisis, and reveal the plans of transnational corporations to profit from it. The authors present both a compelling case and a practical plan for fighting back against the corporate takeover of this most precious natural resource.