From Brazilian anti-dam activists to Newfoundlanders fighting to protect their lake from being turned into a toxic dumpsite, water activists from around the globe are cheering the fact that Vale has been selected as the recipient for the 2012 Public Eye Award for being the worst company of the year.

The company notorious for building a massive $52 billion dam complex in the Amazon Rainforest promising to forcefully relocate 40,000 people and destroy the vital Xingu river ecosystem, earned top spot with 25,042 votes. Canadians had their own reasons for voting for Vale.

Last weekend in Barcelona, the Council of Canadians participated in a gathering of more than 90 activists involved in planning the alternative world water forum (Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau) to take place in Marseilles on March 14 to 17. The FAME is a counter-summit taking place in opposition to the 6th World Water Forum -- a corporate trade show held every three years to give corporations direct access to ministers, heads of state and high-level government officials in order to influence water policy.

The Council of Canadians is pleased to learn that the Town of Ajax has become a Blue Community by passing a resolution banning bottled water, recognizing water as a human right and promoting publicly owned and operated water and wastewater systems.

Ajax is the fourth community in Canada and second in Ontario to join the Blue Communities Project launched by the Council of Canadians and Canadian Union of Public Employees.

The community adopted the resolutions after receiving a letter from 13-year-old water warrior, Robyn Hamlyn, who was inspired to take action after seeing the film Blue Gold, featuring the work of Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow.

The Council of Canadians was invited on Tuesday to speak at an event in Ottawa about the housing crisis in Attawapiskat organized by Kairos and Centretown United.

While I spoke about the water crisis as a water campaigner, I recognize that Attawapiskat is a much larger issue in which the lack of access to water and sanitation only highlight the depth of the injustice faced by the community for decades. There is nothing natural about poverty. The housing crisis in Attawapiskat is a not an accident or an isolated incident. Attawapiskat is a natural outcome of Canada's violent colonial past and racist present.

In what Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs President, Grand Chief Stuart Phillips refers to as a state of "déjà-vu," chiefs from the Tsilhqot'in National Government (TNG) are back in Ottawa nearly a year after a federal government rejected a proposal by Taseko to develop a copper-gold mine on Tsilhqot'in land due to adverse environmental impacts. They are here to campaign against a repackaged proposal by Taseko that hadn't even made it to the federal review panel last time around because it was so flawed.

The chiefs were accompanied by Finn Donnelly NDP Fisheries critic who is calling on the federal government to halt the Prosperity project without wasting taxpayer money on another environmental review.