Water on the agenda as senior officials head to Washington, D.C., Oct. 2

Environment DM Michael Horgan, Environment ADM Michael Martin, Foreign Affairs ADM Peter Boehm, and Natural Resources DM Cassie Doyle have been invited to Washington, D.C., to consult with researchers on water conservation quality.

By Simon Doyle
The Hill Times
September 24, 2007

As the Conservative government considers the protection of Canada's water as a theme for its Oct. 16 Speech From the Throne, a number of senior government officials are headed to Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2 to consult with researchers on water conservation quality, and management.

The Policy Research Initiative, a federal government agency that conducts research in support of horizontal policy issues on the government's medium-term agenda, organized the meeting at the Woodrow Wilson Center on the mall in Washington. Ten senior government officials have been invited to attend, including Michael Horgan, DM of Environment Canada; Michael Martin, ADM at Environment Canada; Peter Boehm, ADM of the Department of Foreign Affairs; and Cassie Doyle, DM of the Department of Natural Resources.

Talk around town says that the government is considering Canada's water as a theme for its fall Throne Speech, a message that it is already emphasizing in its communications. Environment Canada, for instance, says its priorities are climate change, clean air, and clean water.

Environment Minister John Baird (Ottawa West-Nepean, Ont.) is also understood to be travelling to Washington before the Oct. 16 Throne Speech to meet with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which, among other environmental issues, places a focus on water quality.

The remainder of the invitees, aside from government officials, are North American water researchers, who are expected to network with the officials. On the agenda is a morning session on global warming's impact on North American water and an afternoon session on the "water-energy nexus," according to a draft agenda for the meeting obtained by the Council of Canadians. The afternoon session includes an examination of energy savings from water conservation, energy-saving water technologies, and required science.

But David Schindler, a Canadian water researcher and ecology professor at the University of Alberta, told The Hill Times that he declined his invitation to the single-day meeting because top North American water experts have been excluded and those who do participate will not have enough time to address the issues substantively. He fears the consultation is a phony exercise, he said.

By omission, he said, the meeting in Washington emphasizes a lack of scholars from the Canadian Royal Society and researchers who are more focused on the environment. He expressed disappointment that the meeting seems to be focused on water supply and water management without a significant focus on environmental issues.

"I get sick of the standard Canadian government meeting. They haul you in, and they have a near agenda-less meeting. If they can't put out an agenda two weeks before a meeting, it's agenda-less because everybody sort of wanders in clueless and starts at square one," Prof. Schindler said of the meeting, adding that he was asked to fly to Washington to speak for five minutes on water and the environment.

He said government officials contacted him to ask who the top experts on water in North America are, and he gave them 10 names. However, he was told none of them could attend because they were not available. This, along with the fact that experts will have to discuss the issues in a single day, leads him to believe the meeting may not be a serious one, he said.

"At the end they tick a little box that says they consulted you, and that gives them, in my experience, licence to do whatever they want and say that you were consulted on it. I've got to see more than that. I've been tricked too many times," Prof. Schindler said.

Another researcher attending the event, Chandra Madramootoo, a professor at McGill University, told The Hill Times: "You probably have more information than me," adding that he did not know how long his presentation is supposed to be. "All I know is I have to give a talk on efficient technologies for water conservation as a result of climate change."

There are several policy issues concerning water that are on the horizon for the government as it looks at spending billions of dollars rebuilding essential infrastructure in Canadian cities. As water supplies change or decline with global warming, new infrastructure has to be re-thought. It will have to function 50 years from now, when weather patters are very different. For instance, rainfall may occur less often, in intense waves, overwhelming sewage treatment plants, which may lie upstream of drinking water intakes.

In the Alberta oil sands, water is required to extract oil (creating a related problem in polluted water tailings ponds, which need to be cleaned up). In the Athabasca area, water is drawn from the Athabasca River, whose supply is declining due to rising temperatures. Prof. Schindler said that the average flow of the river has been dropping in winter by 1.5 cubic metres per second per year.

Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians, who has authored the soon-to-be-released book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water, told The Hill Times last week that the meeting's agenda and its focus on water management fits in line with an apparent government view of a "North American" water supply as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. The concern for the Council of Canadians is that, as part of the move toward so-called "deep integration" between Canada and the U.S., Canada is going to tap into its water supplies to satisfy increasing U.S. demands.

"It would be good if it were to a conservation goal or towards the notion of protecting the Great Lakes and stopping the invasive species, but they're not talking about that. They're continuing to dredge it, they want to expand the seaway, they want more ships coming in," Ms. Barlow said. She wants to know why Mr. Boem, from Foreign Affairs, is invited to the meeting, she added. "It makes me really nervous. They want to know where Canada is [on water], they want to know how much we have, where our ground water sources are."

There are significant concerns surrounding the Great Lakes, Ms. Barlow said, where the U.S. continues to build new water takings. At the same time, she added, the U.S. EPA has identified 36 U.S. states that are experiencing medium to severe water stress.

"The population is continuing to burgeon in the very areas of the country with no water, the southwest and the Midwest, you know, Nevada, and Florida, Texas, Arizona. It's just booming, and they don't have water," Ms. Barlow said. "There's a lot of work going on now in the United States about water as a national security issue. All of a sudden, the Americans have realized that, just like energy, if they want to maintain their superpower status, they had better figure out what do about the fact that they're running out of water."

In April 2007, the Council of Canadians obtained a leaked document describing an initiative called the "North American Future 2025 Project," showing that business and government leaders in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico were discussing bulk water exports. However the government has repeatedly denied that any such discussions are taking place.

Prof. Schindler also questioned why the meeting is co-chaired by Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, and Howard Alper, a professor at the department of chemistry at the University of Ottawa, neither of who are water experts.

"Why do we have Howard Alper going? Howard Alper is not a water expert, period," Prof. Schindler said. "It could be significant if the right people are there, but I'm afraid the wrong people will be there. I'm a little bit worried that behind the scenes this is some cozy device for sharing water in North America, which is something we don't want to do in this country. People keep telling the government that and the government keeps swearing to Canadians that they'll never do that, and then they have meetings that suggest that they're doing it."

But Thomas Townsend, who is organizing the meeting for the Policy Research Initiative, said the event is simply intended to create a network between researchers and government officials so that they can keep one another informed. "Our interest is to make sure that people are getting advantage of this knowledge and integrating it into the work that they're doing on policy development," he told The Hill Times. He added that water exports are "absolutely not" on the meeting agenda.

Similarly, Mark Servos, the Canada research chair in water quality protection at the University of Waterloo, who will be attending the meeting in Washington, told The Hill Times last week that he believes the government is trying use the meeting to build better networks and information-sharing between researchers and government.

"With investment in water infrastructure, I don't think people understand how big it is," he said. "We take it for granted as Canadians because we have so much water, but we're at the point where water, if we don't take care of it, it's going to limit our ability to provide it to municipalities and to keep the competitive edge for industry as well. As you know, our pulp and paper industries, the oil sands, all the rest of it, all depend on water in a big way."

Added Mr. Townsend: "We're still on a system where we water our golf courses with drinking water in some locations. Is that a smart way of doing business as we go into the 21st century?"

sdoyle@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times