Water exports? Harper should keep taps closed

The Prime Minister's Office gets thousands of letters and e-mails every day. Thirty-five employees do nothing but sift through the avalanche, a job that makes roofing shingle production or rivet design look totally glam. Guess which topics dominate the correspondence?

If you guessed taxes, income trusts and gun control, you'd be wrong, according to a recent Canadian Press story. Top of the list was same-sex marriage -- no surprise there. And second? Try water exports. In 2005, the PMO received 120,000 items on bulk water exports and water privatization. Of course, mass write-in campaigns can skew the numbers overnight and water was evidently the subject of such a campaign. But it was an impressive tally nonetheless.

As a national campaign issue, water exports barely rippled the surface, though it was a big deal among certain groups, notably western farmers and ranchers, whose presence barely registers in the big cities.

That could change. It looks like a Tory government will have to deal with the issue. The fear among anyone who thinks bulk water exports would be disastrous for the economy and the environment is that Stephen Harper & Co. would treat water like oil or any other commodity -- pump it and dump it south of the border as fast as possible with no regard to the long-term consequences.

The working assumption is that the United States -- where two-thirds of the states are expected to face water shortages in the next decade, where aquifers that supply irrigation water are drying up at an alarming rate, and where water flow in the Colorado River dropped by almost half between 2000 and 2005 -- will come after Canadian water in the next few years.

A softening-up campaign appears to have started. Just before Christmas, Paul Cellucci, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, hinted in a CBC Radio interview that opening up the transborder market would be a dandy idea. "Canada has probably one of the largest resources of fresh water in the world," he said. "Water is going to be, already is, a very valuable commodity and I've always found it odd where Canada is so willing to sell oil and natural gas and uranium and coal, which are by their very nature finite. But talking about water is off the table, and water is renewable."

His comments came a couple of weeks after James Lunney, the Conservative candidate for Nanaimo-Alberni in British Columbia, said "there are big opportunities [in] selling water." At an all-candidates meeting last week, he repeated his support for bulk water exports.

Mr. Harper's own views on water exports aren't known. But we can guess that he and Mr. Lunney are not on different planets. A couple of years ago, the prime-minister-in-waiting called for "economic and security integration" with the United States as well as a "continental energy strategy" that should include "a range of other natural resources."

His stance is eerily similar to that of Lyndon Baines Johnson when he was U.S. president in the 1960s. He proposed the Continental Energy and Resources Policy in an attempt to get unfettered access to the vast Canadian resources storehouse. LBJ's attempt failed. The policy more or less came to life 20 years later in the form of the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement, later NAFTA.

Were bulk water exports (as opposed to bottled water exports) excluded from NAFTA's investment and services provision? The answer is not clear. NAFTA's Canadian negotiators say they were. But there is no shortage of trade lawyers who say the opposite, that once you start shipping water across the border the government would be powerless to stop you. Or, if it did, it would have to compensate you for the lost income. This is the basis for Sun Belt Water's $10.5-billion (U.S.) lawsuit against the federal government. The California company argues that British Columbia's cancellation of a water export permit in the 1990s violated NAFTA's investment provisions.

What's wrong with exporting water? A lot. Take Mr. Cellucci's remark that water is a "renewable" resource. Trees are renewable; cut them down and they grow back. Fish stocks are renewable (though, as the depleted cod fishery proved, you can harvest them to the point of no return).

Ecologists have a lot of trouble with the renewable concept when it comes to water. The amount of water has remained static since the planet was formed. Furthermore, they say an eco-system contains exactly the amount of water required to maintain the integrity and health of that eco-system. By definition, there is no surplus.

Bulk water exports may be a dubious business idea, too. Sure, Canada could negotiate royalties on the exports. But would the payments mitigate the potential environmental damage? What if the exports were so great it meant Prairie farmers or Alberta's oil sands operations faced shortages? Both industries consume enormous quantities of water.

Water can also be used to lure industry. You don't, for instance, see a lot of car factories built in the U.S. Southwest, which is essentially one big desert. You do in Southern Ontario, where water is available at relatively low cost. Exporting water may mean exporting jobs.

Mr. Harper wouldn't want to do that, would he?

ereguly@globeandmail.com