Water Meets Money – Part Two

Global Water Summit May 16 - 18 Madrid Spain

Water and Politics

Protecting Canada’s water is one of the issues that no federal or provincial government dare ignore. Whenever the issue has arisen, it engenders passionate political disputes.

That was the case in the recent NAFTA 2 – Canada US Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) where US negotiators attempted to define Canadian fresh water as a commodity that would open the way to its privatization and its exploitation and export as any other tradeable commodity. 

A lead organization on the matter of Canadian water sovereignty is the Council of Canadians (C of C) who in February 2020 preceding the July 1^st 2020 ratification of the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) expressed the concerns of millions of Canadians about the effect of the new NAFTA Agreement on the definition of Canadian fresh water as a commodity.

While the C of C campaign helped to prevent an abject surrender by the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government to US pressures for unrestricted continental trade in water as a commodity, the threat remains. The weak language in the agreement remains open to violations and costly tribunals to fight off US challenges to Canadian sovereignty over its own fresh water resources. What happened in the near past will happen again.

Pipelines to the west coast and the potential for oil spill disasters on pristine west coast has aroused mass protest that is ongoing.

In the 1950’s and 60’s a big US private investor, enlisting the US Corp of Engineers, was permitted by the federal government to explore altering major Canadian basins and divert major river systems from the Canadian north to the US border to satisfy US needs. The scheme entitled the North American Water and Power Alliance, (NAWAPA) aroused mass protest and was shelved.  

The St. Lawrence Seaway, vital to the economic interests of both Canada and the USA fared better and along with the 1906 Great Lakes Treaty is managed by joint US Canadian treaties.

The Columbia River Treaty  was an entirely different matter and aroused a grass roots mass opposition and Parliamentary crisis. The scheme permitted the construction of a series of dams on the Canadian Columbia River system to provide hydro electric power exports, flood control and irrigation benefits downstream to the USA in exchange for some US dollars.

The treaty was rammed through the BC Provincial Legislature by Socred Premier W.A. (Wacky) Bennet with the support of the Diefenbaker Conservatives over a mass democratic opposition extending from the British Columbia Communists led by Nigel Morgan, to NDP BC MP Bert Herridge to the WW2 General A.G. L. McNaughton. All news media covered the issue at the time and the McLean’s Magazine article by Peter C. Newman of November 1962 provides an overview of the dispute as it impacted Parliament.

The renegotiating of treaties between Canada and the USA are always contentious. The Columbia River Treaty renewal talks, now underway confront fresh demands by US negotiators to reduce or eliminate its responsibilities under the treaty to pay British Columbia for the down stream benefits the dams in Canada provide to the USA.

P.M Justin Trudeau Politics of Water

Immediately after the federal election of 2019 the Trudeau Liberals pledged to organize a discussion about the management of Canadian water. “Toward the Creation of a Canada Water Agency Discussion Paper Environment and Climate Change” was authored and published inviting public comment.

The discussion paper begins with a disclaimer that the Mandate of the Prime Minister to the Minister of the Environment Jonathan Wilkinson is not intended to be understood as soliciting Canadian opinion about the enactment of legislation to create a Canadian Water Agency which amazingly does not exist.

The mandate is designed to foster a time-limited public discussion of how to “manage” a water crisis rather than solve it.

There is a lot of water to manage.

The following excerpt is taken from the discussion paper.

“Canada has more than two million lakes and rivers—more inland waters than any other country. Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water and the third largest renewable supply of fresh water at 7%. The country has 25 major watersheds (see map in Annex 1). These waters flow to all three coasts, crossing international, provincial and territorial boundaries. Canada also has one quarter of the world’s remaining wetlands, covering 13% of the country.”

Sixty percent of all Canadian fresh water drainage systems flow north and just one, the McKenzie River system drains 20% of the area of Canada, a land mass the size of Europe.

In spite of an abundance of this priceless water resource many Canadians, in the first place First Nations, and most urban and rural communities confront serious deficiencies in the availability of clean water for drinking sanitation, nutrition and irrigation.

At the same time the internet overflows with reports of privately owned industries engaged in the wasteful use of water, depleting aquifers and public outrage at the pittance it pays for its consumption. The Nestles scandal is ongoing.

Less Talk and More Solutions

The struggle to provide fresh water to Canadians and for its rational and restorative uses goes hand in hand with the needs of billions around the world who are denied it.

The UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right hints at the root of the problem but dares not offer the obvious solution.

“The roots of the current water and sanitation crisis can be traced to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships…”

That is a shamefaced way of avoiding the obvious, that unequal power relationships beg the question, which class has the power and which class lacks it?  To achieve the noble UN goal requires a reversal of the unequal power relationship that is the cause of the problem by making it even more unequal in favour of those who need water as opposed to those who seek only to profit from it. 

Big investor interests think of Km/hectare/m of water as they think of bbls of oil, tonnes of ores, board feet of timber or lbs of pork bellies. It is all the same to investors who invest in resource commodities listed for trading on stock exchanges.

What the May 16 -18 2021 Global Water Summit in Madrid Spain and the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal’s Canadian Water Agency Paper focussing primarily on the opportunities for corporations to profiteer from a global water crisis won’t do, the organized labour movement, the organizations for sovereignty, First Nations rights activists can do. Develop a people’s plan for preserving Canada’s water resources.

The Fundamental Principle of A People’s Plan for Water

The Canadian Water Agency that is needed is one that has the power to administer and enforce by an Act of Parliament and a constitutional amendment, laws and legislation that upholds Canada’s commitment to the UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right by banning and criminalizing all attempts to engage in the trading of Canada’s fresh water as a commodity. Accompanying such legislation must be a plan, funded from a reduction in arms spending and corporate subsidies to carry out all of the infrastructure improvements that will enable every community in Canada that lacks adequate and clean water to have it.

A people’s plan for water development and its use would be undertaken in the full knowledge that it will bring every genuine anti-monopoly organization into a sharp confrontation with private investor capital.

That confrontation is unavoidable and the only path that will lead to the care and protection of Canada’s magnificent abundant water resources and guarantee it will be there for future generations of Canadians.

Next: Part Three - A People’s Plan for Water Development and Use