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January 18, 2008 Robert Kennedy Jr. came to Canada this week with a strong message -- don’t sell your water to the United States. Water has fast become an issue of national security and geopolitical power, as crucial to national interests as energy. Drought in areas such as Atlanta and North Carolina is part of a much larger crisis in the United States where vast regions are suffering water shortages and demand is outstripping supply. The Edmonton Journal reported today that Kennedy predicts that the U.S. water crisis will have huge implications for this country. "Canada is going to find tremendous pressure from the U.S. to sell or share water as a commodity," he told a Waterkeeper Alliance meeting and fundraiser in Banff that was supported by celebrities Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Christie Brinkley, Daryl Hannah, Kelsey Grammer, Jason Priestly and Canada’s own Justin Trudeau. "But sharing water would lead to an environmental catastrophe in Canada." Bulk water exports are touted as a quick fix to water shortages and the obvious place the U.S. would look for new sources of drinking water is Canada. Prime Minister Harper has dismissed concerns that there have been discussions on bulk water exports. Kennedy disagrees. “If you talk to government officials, everybody says they are looking for Canada to bail them out," he told the Waterkeeper meeting in Banff. Leaked documents from a project established to guide the Security and Prosperity Partnership clearly put water exports on the table. The North American Future 2025 project, an iniative of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in collaboration with the Conference Board of Canada and the Centro do Investigacion y Decencia Economicas (CIDE), convened several meetings last spring, one of which discussed “water consumption, water transfers and artificial diversions of bulk water."
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