Some Quick Quotes on American Interest in Canada's Water

Jim Wright, Democratic congressman from Texas, in his 1966 book "The Coming Water Famine": "There is to the north of us a stupendous supply of water...enough to satisfy our predictable wants for years to come. We need the water. We need to develop a means of getting that water."

Rep. Fred Grandy (R., IA) during a CNN interview on June 28, 1988: "I think one of the reasons the United States wants to negotiate a free trade agreement with Canada is became Canada has the water resources that this country is eventually going to need."

US Ambassador Clayton Yeutter (yait-ter) during a May 1, 1988 interview on CTV's "Question Period": "In either case it will have to be negotiated between the two countries and so I don't think anybody in Canada should be concerned that 'our water is now going to be committed to the Americans.' Obviously that will not happen except by deliberate decisions of the government of Canada." [but has it already happened? read on!]

"Environment Canada was lobbying hard, within caucus, to get an exemption for bulk water under the free trade agreement. Other sections in this book ["Water and Free Trade"] note the remarks by Frank Quinn, senior civil servant with Environment Canada that "in the eleventh hour, we didn't get all the changes we wanted." This is commonly interpreted to mean that water was initially exempt, but in the final stages this exemption was withdrawn.

This is consistent with information obtained through my involvement in the BCSSBG [British Columbia "Small" Small Business Group, which tried to protect Canada's water rights during the negotiation of the Free Trade Agreement] lobby. In December, one day after the final text was released, I phoned Chris Thomas, who had been Carney's [Patricia Carney, Tory MP involved in FTA negotiation] international trade advisor during the negotiations. When I queried him concerning the legal status of bulk water under the free trade agreement, Mr. Thomas responded, in a somewhat exasperated tone, "It's exempt. It's right there in black and white. Water is exempt from the FTA."

When asked to find the exemption, Mr. Thomas could not, of course,do so. After searching the text, Mr. Thomas replied "I don't know what happened. We discussed it; it should be there. I thought it was there."

The fact that there would seem to have been an explicit exemption for water in the deal until the eleventh hour is further confirmed by remarks initially made by Pat Carney when first queried by myself on this matter during the course of a Neighborhood Night held at the False Creek Community Center in Vancouver on 17 February 1988. "Water is exempt from the deal- it's right in the agreement," said Carney. When asked to produce a reference to the exemption in the text Carney consulted with an aid [sic] and then replied "It was there."

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