The United States and Canada have often been uneasy neighbors, perhaps never more so than when Canada included the U.S. on a list of countries that torture inmates.
That flashpoint aside, Canada's recent habit of distancing itself may have less to do with politics and more to do with a perceived extraterritorial expansion of U.S. environmental laws - a state of affairs that wakens Canadian fears of being gobbled up by its larger, stronger and louder neighbor.
For example, in July of this year, the National Academies expressed the opinion that the United States should pass Great Lakes protection laws more closely mirroring the standards sets by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) - standards which Canada had already adopted.
On October 3, President Bush took up the challenge by signing the Great Lakes Compact, a complex, 13-part bill that will protect the Lakes' water from unwarranted diversion and protect the water itself via standards for everything from industrial chemicals to sewage, including ballast water regulations aimed at preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species (PDF).
This Compact, almost a decade in the making and several times stalled by state governors unwilling to accept a broader but more limiting portfolio of protections, is now law. Diversions outside the Lakes area will require the unanimous agreement of all eight governors (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York) and the heads of adjacent Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario).
That the Compact is still not as comprehensive as standards set by the IMO is unfortunate. Even so, the Compact is by far the most thorough bill yet passed in the U.S. regarding Great Lakes water, and not a moment too soon as drought spreads throughout the U.S. southeast, southwest, the Pacific Coast, Idaho, and even into the upper Great Plains.
The bill, a political hot potato among U.S. governors, finally won grudging Canadian acceptance when the U.S. Senate incorporated an amendment, at the Council of Canadian's request, prohibiting sales to water bottlers. Most likely, Canadians felt they had no choice. NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, clearly defines water as both a service and an investment, opening wide the door to sales south of the U.S. border by any U.S. government agency looking for an edge in Mexico.
These water-sale schemes weren't isolated to the U.S, however. The Compact, which serves an area in the U.S. and contiguous Canadian provinces with a population of approximately 40 million, is the offshoot of a 1999 proposal from Ontario to ship Lakes water to Asia, and Ontario was not the only schemer. At various times, British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland had also considered licensing bulk water exports.
If Great Lakes water is one area where the U.S. and Canada can agree, in other water issues the two are often at loggerheads. A northwestern N. Dakota project, 20 years in the making, to capture Missouri River water is facing down the province of Manitoba over the need to treat the water.
This project, called the Northwest Area Water Supply (NAWS), would divert water from the south-flowing Missouri River basin into the north-flowing Souris River basin, which Canada charges would spread foreign microbes, or biota, into Canada's water.
The Canadians are insisting on an expensive and elaborate water treatment facility. The U.S. argues that the biota, which can include invasive species, are already present in Canadian rivers via other natural, watershed transfers. Western North Dakota is currently in the grip of drought, but the likelihood of a Missouri River rescue for the area, particularly the city of Minot, seems farther away today than it did in 1988 when the project was first conceived.
United States' environmental groups are equally strident in opposing Hydro Quebec's Rupert River diversion, even though the main purpose behind the project is providing power to the northeastern U.S., whose growing population will have to use more polluting forms of generation (coal, for example) if the project is cancelled.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, the International Rivers Network, Friends of the Earth USA, the Sierra Club and Project Laundry List have collaborated with various Canadian civil society groups and a number of First Nation Cree communities to block Hydro Quebec's Rupert River diversion.
This same project was proposed and then blocked in 1992 when former New York Governor Mario Cuomo nixed the proposal. The current project will form a reservoir two thirds the size of the city of Montreal, and displace First Nation's people from their ancestral lands.
Bands of Cree insist that the economic benefits (clean power) do not justify the ecological consequences (diversion of historical rivers), but a 2002 consensus of Cree nation chiefs called the Paix des Braves - a concession reportedly won with the promise of jobs, development and relocation costs - has already overruled these minority dissenters.
Canada is even having its own internal water battle. In Alberta, where regional water experts are declaring a water shortage, the August 2006 decision to close nearly every river, lake and stream in southern Alberta is being met with outcries from First Nation Cree and the Tsuu T'ina Nation.
Both groups argue that the measure deprives them of treaty rights to hunting, fishing and water resources while failing to protect the environment. The dirty and seldom-mentioned secret is that the pressure doesn't come from a water shortage but the need to reserve as much water as possible for Athabascan tar sands recovery (PDF).
West of Alberta, in British Columbia, an Environmental Appeal Board decision to deny water rights to a luxury home development has some local residents cheering and two area individuals filing an appeal for reconsideration. In the meantime, limited water supplies continue to be delivered to the development, but the Board's stance may set the tone for future distributions, effectively stopping development. Who'd a thunk Vancouver would ever be faced with water shortages, but the truth is climate change hits everywhere.
John Thompson of Duke University and Stephen Randall of the University of Calgary have co-authored a book called, "Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies", that explores these cross-border tensions. In a symposium held by the Canada Institute, the authors discussed their work in depth with Scott See from the University of Maine and Don Abelson of the University of Western Ontario.
In the book, Randall describes this uneasy alliance as the inevitable result of U.S. expectations that Canada will invariably follow its lead. When these expectations are not met, they lead to bewilderment on the part of U.S. officials and a feeling of being manipulated among their Canadian counterparts. In fact, America's habit of assuming Canada will always follow its lead fails to take into consideration Canada's diverging cultural values and national policy choices, which range from a preference for moderate versus conspicuous consumption to an increasing reluctance to participate in wars like that in Iraq.
As See pointed out, Canada's fear of being absorbed into America's sphere of influence plays a large part in this ambivalent relationship, as do rising tensions over Arctic Ocean oil reserves, which may put Canada and the U.S. across the table from each other when the time comes to hammer out territorial oil agreements.
Beyond fossil fuels, however, ongoing freshwater issues between the two countries - which share both a common border and most of the available water in North America - are likely to set the tone for political conversations in the future.
The most promising bridge to amity between the two nations, in the form of newly re-elected Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is broken by the fact that Harper, like his U.S. counterpart Bush, operates with an opposition majority in Parliament. If a Democrat wins the upcoming Presidential Election, expect tensions between the two nations to escalate as the wars over water (and oil) meet 21st century exigencies like global warming head-on.
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