NIKIFORUK: Water, water everywhere

[Oscar]

Water, water everywhere? - Andrew Nikiforuk

From the November 5, 2007 issue of Canadian Business magazine

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets ... 724_198724

Bad business ideas, like zombies, rarely die. But tired schemes to export Canadian water could sure use a bullet to the head — or, at least, a proper burial.The latest batch of water export schemes (and they’ve been around for 50 years) hail from all parts of the country.

Some Manitobans think they can get rich piping water to thirsty Texas. Nova Scotians have calculated the cost of floating bags of water to the Lone Star State, too. And supporters of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, such as economist Wendy Dobson, have quietly advocated that it’s about time to put a price on water and open the taps for U.S. markets, including the bonedry south.

But the big idea that Canada can sell water like oil is based on several remarkable myths: that we have lots of water to spare; that we manage it wisely; that we maintain excellent water data; and that, yes, Canada will get filthy rich selling H2O. Wrong on all counts.

Canada has no surplus water and never will. Given that the country has but 7% of the world’s land mass, we only have a fair share of its renewable water: 7%. No more, no less. Both Russia and Brazil have more. In addition, most of our water flows north into dry, inaccessible Arctic deserts, while the remainder, just 2.6% of the world’s renewable supply, runs along our southern border, where most Canadians live. Many of these lakes and rivers have been grossly polluted. So there’s nothing to spare.

Canada has also managed its water capital as poorly as an Enron accountant. Lake Winnipeg, the world’s 10th largest freshwater lake, remains on a death watch thanks to hog waste and climate change. The mighty St. Lawrence River is in big trouble, too. Drought, population growth and receding glaciers have reduced summer flows in most western rivers by between 40% and 70%.

An exhaustive 2006 investigation by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America (an offspring of NAFTA, no less) found that Ottawa consistently failed to enforce the Fisheries Act when dealing with 10 different pulp-and-paper mills in Eastern Canada. The whole idea of exporting water assumes that Canada knows how much water it really has. We don’t. Incredibly, the country hasn’t had a credible water policy or comprehensive plan for protecting watersheds since 1987. Nearly a third of the population (10 million citizens) depends on groundwater, yet the government knows next to boo about this resource. To date, only three of eight key regional aquifers have been mapped. As one 2006 government memo concluded, “The current state of the knowledge of the resource is inversely proportional to its importance.” Such data poverty raises a basic question: How could any sane Canadian ever contemplate sharing water resources with the U.S. when the feds don’t even know what’s in the national water bank?

Canada will never get rich selling water for one powerful reason. We can’t export it without subtracting from the existing economy or important ecosystems sustaining that economy. Canada’s trade sector deeply depends on the quality and quantity of water available. Almost every Canadian product sold abroad (cattle, grain, hogs, cars, aluminum, wood or oil) all contain enormous volumes of embedded water, or what economists call “virtual water”. In fact, Canada now exports more virtual water than either India or China. Exporting real water would divert it from existing businesses and ecosystems.

The government needs to make a clear declaration that our water will never be for sale. Then it needs to manage our water resources in order to protect existing businesses and the inconvenient threats posed by climate change.

Such action would bury water-export zombies once and for all and send a truly conservative message to our esteemed trade partners in the U.S. Good friends bring discipline to their households, not by draining the neighbours’ pool but by living within their means.

Andrew Nikiforuk is a Calgary journalist and author of the report On The Table: Water, Energy and

North American Integration, published by the Munk Centre’s Program on Water Issues.

This article is published with the permission of the author and the Canadian Business magazine.