The Council replies: Letters to the editor

Water's on the table

Stuart Trew
The Globe and Mail and Ottawa Citizen
August 21, 2007
Re: Canada And U.S. In Secret Talks Over Bulk Water Exports, Dion Alleges, The Globe and Mail, August 18, 2007 and Tories deny Dion's claim of bulk-water export talks, The Ottawa Citizen, August 19, 2007.

Ottawa — So the Harper government thinks only the "loony left," as Nepean-Carleton Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre says, is talking about bulk-water exports.

Well, the North American Future 2025 Project is no conspiracy. It is a policy discussion initiated by all three NAFTA governments "to help guide the ongoing Security and Prosperity Partnership," according to the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Are bulk water exports on the table? You bet. They were on the agenda of an April 27 meeting in Calgary that the Harper government avoided at the last minute due to public pressure. "It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water," Armand Peschard-Sverdrup of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies told a journalist just before that meeting. "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."

The Hudson Institute, another pro-NAFTA U.S. think tank, says the Canadian government is helping fund this study along with the Americans and Mexicans, something the Harper government has yet to admit.

But the fact remains that our government has initiated a discussion, to inform the Security and Prosperity Partnership, that appears biased in favour of bulk water exports to the United States. There can be no squirming out of this one.

Stuart Trew, Researcher, Council of Canadians

Click here for more information about bulk water exports in Canada.