The SPP and water: Bulk exports and the “joint optimum utilization of the available water”

It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water… It's no secret that Canada is going to have an overabundance of water. At the end of the day, there may have to be arrangements.

~ North American Future 2025 Project Leader Armand Peschard-Sverdrup,
April 2007

There is very little mention of water in publicly available Security and Prosperity Partnership documents beyond plans to “combat invasive alien species” in the Great Lakes, and to create an online portal for sharing information on water management in each country. But we know from several leaked documents from U.S. groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies that bulk water exports and other contentious issues related to water management have been discussed in trilateral talks linked to the SPP.

Water: A “long term goal” of deep integration

In May 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations, Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales released a final version of Building a North American Community — a report of the Task Force on the Future of North America. While commending North America’s three leaders for initiating the SPP two months earlier, the task force, which was co-chaired by John Manley and vice-chaired by Thomas d’Aquino of the CCCE, promoted a much broader vision for North America that included a common security perimeter and a common economic zone by 2010.

Missing from the final report of May 2005, but clearly still “on the table,” was the issue of bulk water exports to the United States.

“No item – not Canadian water, not Mexican oil, not American anti-dumping laws – is ‘off the table’; rather, contentious or intractable issues will simply require more time to ripen politically,” claimed a leaked summary of a 2005 task force meeting in Toronto. Task force members also considered, “crafting a North American ‘resource pact’ that would allow for greater intra-regional trade and investment in certain non-renewable natural resources, such as oil, gas, and fresh water.”

Building a North American Community is not simply the product of an ambitious think tank. The Council on Foreign Relations carries enormous influence in Washington. Similarly, the CCCE has been the driving force behind the SPP in Canada. Thomas d’Aquino regularly attends Security and Prosperity Partnership meetings and has direct input into the integration process through his access to the North American Competitiveness Council, which is housed within the CCCE. If he is discussing bulk water exports with his American counterparts then clearly the issue is very much “on the table.”

A future for bulk water exports?

As if one, huge trilateral task force on North American integration wasn’t enough, in March 2006 the governments of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico launched the North American Future 2025 Project, “to help guide the ongoing Security and Prosperity Partnership,” according to an April 13, 2007 article in the Ottawa Citizen. The project is an initiative of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in collaboration with the Conference Board of Canada and Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE).

According to leaked documents acquired by the Council of Canadians, CSIS has been holding a series of closed-door meetings with business leaders, government officials and selected academics in order to “strengthen the capacity of Canadian, U.S., and Mexican administration officials and that of their respective legislatures to analyze, comprehend, and anticipate North American integration.” A roundtable on the “Future of the North American Environment,” which took place April 27, 2007 in Calgary, discussed “water consumption, water transfers and artificial diversions of bulk water,” with the aim of achieving “joint optimum utilization of the available [North American] water.”

The North American Future 2025 Project is proof that the idea of bulk water exports is being discussed in the context of continental integration. It assumes that water will be pumped south from Canada into the United States, and that the SPP is the proper venue for making such decisions. A final report from the CSIS project will be tabled to SPP leaders at the next summit in Montebello, Quebec.

Multi-modal corridors and water pipelines

The Trans Texas Corridor has been called “the largest engineering project ever proposed” for George Bush’s home state. At its widest, the “multi-modal” transit corridor will be four football fields wide and include lanes for cars, trains and trucks headed from the Mexican coast through Texas and into America’s heartland. But the track doesn’t end there. Through public-private consortia like the North American Super Corridor Coalition, which counts the province of Manitoba as a proud participant, plans are underway to extend this Texas pet-project right up past the Canadian border to an expanded port in Churchill.

This proposed mega-highway has been dubbed the “NAFTA Superhighway” because it is designed to speed up the flow of goods between the three signatory countries. But “multimodal” doesn’t just mean train, truck and car lanes. It also means pipelines.

“Texas proposes to build a new type of transportation system, a network of wide corridors designed to move people and goods faster and more safely than ever before,” says a Trans Texas Corridor Document from 2002. “Beyond that, the corridor will feature a wide utility zone for the transmission of oil, natural gas, electricity, data and a substance critical to the future of the state – water.”

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