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From The Montreal Gazette:
Philip Ling, Canwest News Service
June 17, 2010
A new report released Wednesday by the Fraser Institute says Canada has an abundance of water and should consider exporting it in an “environmentally sustainable manner,” findings critics say are misguided and “problematic.”
The Vancouver-based right-wing think tank suggests Canada needs to “move beyond fearmongering and protectionism” and look instead at the “benefits and opportunities presented by bulk water exports.”
Report author Diane Katz contends international trade in water would not only benefit countries with scare water resources, but would also lead to “responsible pricing” in Canada and more responsible use. She argues artificially low residential and industrial water rates fail to encourage conservation.
Katz admits the high cost of transportation means bulk water exports likely wouldn’t be cost-effective at the moment, but she argues easing restrictions would encourage the development of new technologies.
Critics, however, say proposals for bulk water exports don’t come from cities dealing with water shortages or humanitarian organizations, but rather from commercial interests.
“This is not coming from a desire to address the human need for water, or a desire to replenish the environment where there are water shortages,” Meera Karunananthan, national water campaigner for the left-leaning Council of Canadians, said Wednesday. “This is trying to make huge profits from a very basic need.”
Karunananthan argues the popular belief that Canada has surplus of water is a “myth” and there is “limited data” on how much water is being exploited.
“This assumption that we have so much water we should be shipping it outside the country is false,” she said. “We frankly don’t know what our groundwater resources are at the moment.”
Canada holds 6.5 per cent of the world’s renewable water resources, the council estimates, and more than one quarter of municipalities have faced shortages in recent years.
“We fail to acknowledge the amount of water actually exploited,” she said. “We don’t even have enough information on how much bottled water we’re exporting from Canada.”
The suggestion that water conservation is based on Canadian protectionism or nationalism is also “detrimental” and “problematic,” said Karunananthan.
“It’s about protecting the environment and protecting an important an environment resource from commercialization,” she said. “We see water as a public resource and (a) human right that is not to be commodified.”
The Fraser Institute is calling for federal and provincial statutes that bar water exports to be repealed and replaced with “institutional mechanisms for assigning private water rights.”
It’s also calling for the establishment of a centralized database to track water inventories and for home and industrial water subsidies to be “phased out in favour of full-cost recovery.”
Wednesday’s report comes on the heels of a Conservative government bill last month that aims to strengthen prohibitions on bulk removal of Canada’s water outside the country.
The legislation — still in first reading — is intended to thwart the diversion of river water south to the U.S. through such means as dams, aqueducts, canals and pipelines.
The Transboundary Waters Protection Act would “plug the last remaining gap” in a ban against bulk water removal that is in place for the Great Lakes and other water sources that straddle the Canada-U.S. border and are covered by provincial law, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said at the time. It provides new powers of inspection and enforcement and fines of up to $6 million for corporate violations.
With files from Tobi Cohen
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