Both Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke are long-term activists on trade and justice issues, now with a special focus on water, whose campaigning lives have intertwined for many years.

Barlow, born in 1947, was a high-profile leader in the women's movement in Canada, serving as the Director of Equal Opportunity for the City of Ottawa and leading a national coalition against violence against women. She later became Pierre Trudeau’s advisor on women’s issues when he was Prime Minister in 1983-84, but left formal politics in 1985 to help found the Council of Canadians (CoC), of which she has been the elected honorary chairperson since 1988, earning her living through her books. The Council now has 100,000 members and 70 activist chapters. Its original mandate was to campaign against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and to fight for Canadian sovereignty in the area of natural resources (including water), social programs and foreign policy. Most of Barlow’s work has been focused on the regional and global trade agenda, with water being an issue of equal special concern. She is the author or co-author of 15 books on all aspects of globalisation and the theft of the ‘global commons’, the latest being Too Close for Comfort, Canada’s Future in Fortress North America. She is also working through the Council of Canadians on a ten-city “Citizens’ Inquiry into Canada/US Relations”, a “Beyond Factory Farming Coalition” and a fair trade campaign. She has received honorary doctorates from six Canadian universities.

Tony Clarke, born in 1945, did graduate studies and earned his doctorate in social ethics at the University of Chicago in 1974, and, inspired by Paulo Freire’s work, returned to Canada to work on the social justice programmes of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), where he became head of the social action department, and worked on a whole range of national and international social justice issues. In 1987 he chaired (first with Barlow, later by himself), the Action Canada Network (ACN), the largest coalition of civil society organisations and labour unions ever assembled in Canada to mobilise opposition to the free trade agenda. Clarke was also a member of CoC’s national board from 1997-2003 and vice-chair most of that time.

In 1993 Clarke was dismissed from his position in the CCCB, subsequently writing a book, Behind the Mitre, the Moral Leadership Crisis in the Catholic Church (1995), documenting this experience. He documented the unaccountable power and influence of big business in another book, Silent Coup: Confronting the Big Business Takeover of Canada (1997). In 1997 he founded the Polaris Institute (PI, with Barlow on the Board) “for the purpose of unmasking the corporate power that lies behind government.” Areas of PI’s work have included an Anti-Star Wars Campaign, a project called Continental Security Check, a Corporate Campaigns Project, a GATS campaign, an Energy Security Project, a set of water campaigns (e.g. on bottled water), and ideas for alternative trade regimes. PI also analyses strategies of multinational companies and develops counter-strategies, as well as publishing ‘company profiles’ to inform activists world-wide about the companies.
 
These were the organisational bases from which they played a key role in building opposition to, and defeating, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), and in campaigning against the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s free-trade agenda, especially at Seattle (1999) and Cancun (2003). With their working lives closely connected for over 16 years, Barlow and Clarke are now recognized as two of the most respected citizen leaders in Canada and in the global justice movement generally. Both have been featured speakers at the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre and Mumbai. They have also been important innovators in cross-border organising, shown in their work against the MAI and WTO; in creating democratic models of organising, shown by the Council of Canadians; in bringing new issues to the forefront of the movement, as with NAFTA, the MAI and water; and in developing credible alternatives, which are discussed in their joint book Global Showdown: How the New Activists are Fighting Global Corporate Rule (2001). They have also worked closely together through the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG) which was set up in 1998. A major common focus of their work in recent years has been the world’s water resources. In 2002 they published Blue Gold: the Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water, which is now published in 40 countries. Clarke’s latest book Inside the Bottle highlights concerns about the bottled water industry and its impact on the water resources of the poor. They have built a considerable network of activists in the South, and an important part of their work has been visiting and assisting communities struggling for water rights, e.g. the village of Plachimada in Kerala fighting against a Coca-Cola plant.

One particular victory for the international water movement was the inclusion by referendum into the constitution of Uruguay a new article ensuring not only that access to piped water and sanitation is a fundamental human right available to everyone, but also that in the creation of water policies social considerations take precedence over economic considerations. Barlow is now also deeply involved with an international campaign for a United Nations Convention on the Right to Water building on the new Uruguayan legislation.