Critics dump on water study

Robert Gibbens, August 28, 2008, Montreal Gazette - The Montreal Economic Institute's dive into a 40-year controversy over bulk water exports ran into a tide of skepticism yesterday.

Marcel Boyer, chief economist of the Montreal think tank, made public a 31-page study that claims Quebec could earn royalties of $6.5 billion annually on fresh water exports, or five time the dividend currently paid by Hydro-Québec to the government. That's if it charged a 10-per-cent royalty on exports of one-tenth of the province's annual "renewable" resource of one trillion cubic metres of "blue gold."

"Large-scale exports of fresh water would be a wealth-creating idea for Quebec and all of Canada ... it's urgent to look seriously at developing our blue gold."

The negative reaction came swiftly yesterday.

"Canada's precious fresh water resource belongs to the people and cannot be bundled and privatized at the whim of government and corporate interests," said Joe Cressy, campaign co-ordinator at Ottawa's Polaris Institute, a non-profit organization committed to social well-being.

"Water is a fundamental human right and any attempt to divert or export it, whether to the U.S. or Saudi Arabia, must defer to what's in the broad Canadian public interest," he added. "In a pre-election cycle there's great pressure from corporations to allow the export of fresh water. If Quebec went ahead, other provinces would have to follow."

The Harper government has promised not to allow exports, said Francis Scarpaleggia, MP for Lac St. Louis and the Liberals' critic on water issues. He has tabled a private member's bill to prevent large-scale transfers of water within Canada and prevent diversion to the U.S.

"The MEI study coming out now is extremely disturbing," he said in an interview. "My bill was intended as a safety measure before a water crisis blows up. I'll bring it back if there's an election. But 90 per cent of Canada's fresh water is under provincial control and that complicates things."

Boyer said in an interview the launch of the study was not related to the election climate in Canada and the U.S. nor to presidential candidate Barack Obama's threat to re-write the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.

"We began the study months ago and it is a follow-up to the one we did last year on the privatization of Hydro-Québec. We don't really know how much fresh water we have or whether exporting it would make economic sense, but we've got to think about it and be ready if the issue comes to the boil further down the road."

He said the think tank, backed by a bevy of prominent Quebec businesspeople, is asking the provincial government to set up a special fact-finding committee to look at all the issues. "They are politically charged, of course, and I don't see the government acting at present."

He said the cost of seawater desalination will ultimately decide the commercial value of fresh water, along with the cost of installing the infrastructure needed for diversion or export overseas.

Environment Canada warned last December the country's water reserves are not as plentiful as once believed because of population growth, global warming and widespread pollution.

"I think the MEI is trying to spur an ideological debate between right and left with the issue of commercializing fresh water, alongside the controversy over private healthcare," said Karel Mayrand, the David Suzuki Foundation's Quebec director. "Water must be above politics and exports would pose grave environmental risks."

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