No drought of info at water meeting

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

A fresh take on a federal national water policy was one of the clear messages that emerged out of a panel discussion on water last Thursday night hosted by Lac St. Louis Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia.

“I'd like to see steps taken to protect our freshwater from export, a junior minister for water, more federal money for water science, and the government to spend more money related to infrastructure in municipalities,” said Scarpaleggia, the Liberal party's water critic.

Though all panellists seemed certain that a new federal policy on water was important, not many were keen to comment on what should be in it.

“I’m probably not the best person to talk about that,” said Tom McAuley, an engineer who is a member of the International Joint Commission, a non-government agency that comprises US and Canadian citizens and watches over boundary waters between the two countries. McAuley did agree, however, that an urgent part of the new policy should be uniting all provinces together in stopping them from exporting water.

“Somebody has to make the provinces aware. It can be good for you economically but it opens all kinds of doors afterward,” agreed Dr. Chandra Mandramootoo, dean of agricultural and environmental sciences at McGill University's Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. He said that even one province exporting its water to the United States might allow the latter to use it as an example and ask Canada why it federally stands against exporting water. However, he also said that deciding on what exactly should be in a federal water policy would be very difficult due to the various economic, environmental, social, and political domains that it would pertain to.

When asked why Canada voted against a recent resolution in the United Nations designating water as a human right for all, Scarpaleggia again returned to the fear of US exportation. “At the time, the reason for voting against was the fear that by subscribing to this right formally, somehow Canada could be embarrassed into exporting this water, especially to the United States,” he said. He placed more importance on having Canadian foreign policy reflect in practice that water is viewed as a human right, and then have it formally recognized.

Mandramootoo said he hoped Canada would play a leadership role as battles are fought across the world in the 21st century over an increasingly rare resource. “I believe Canada’s success with the United States on the boundary waters treaty is a good model that can be used for these other countries.”

At its core, the 1909 treaty between Canada and the United States and its amendments over the years bind the two countries into ensuring that no pollution or health hazards are created by one country and sent to the other to deal with via water. The International Joint Commission was created to implement the treaty.

The panel was preceded by different presentations by each panellist, including a slideshow about Montreal's water and waste water recycling plants by retired SNC-Lavallin engineer Howard Brown, as well as a breakdown of the Lake St. Louis area's water basins by Benoit Paré, president of the Ville-Marie ZIP committee, an environmental group.

Over three hundred people filled Beaconsfield High School's auditorium to watch the panel.