H2O advocate and Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow maps out Canada’s water apocalypse in her new book, Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse and Canada’s Water Crisis (ECW). From pipelines and pork to Donald Trump, Barlow fields some of the more slippery questions on the looming threats to our freshwater ahead of her Toronto stop on a 14-city book tour Friday.
On the Trudeau government’s record on water protection
The Trudeau government is in a thousand ways better than Harper’s. And around the First Nations water sanitation situation they are putting their money where their mouth is. The problem is that Harper gutted so much [the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act]. We have no protection for 99 per cent of the lakes and rivers these pipelines, Energy East and Trans-Mountain, would cross. The government has launched consultations on acts the Harper regime gutted. But there’s pressure from the mining, construction and energy industries for the feds to come up with compromises. We have a real fight on our hands.
On threats posed to the Great Lakes by tar sands development
The Great Lakes are becoming a carbon corridor, not just via pipelines [like Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline system]. We’re talking about rail and the shipping of these materials on the Great Lakes themselves. The U.S. Coast Guard has given its okay to ship fracked wastewater via barges on rivers and lakes in the United States. We’re now taking the most dangerous materials and putting them on and near the Great Lakes at great peril to them.
On the pressure that beef and pork exports are putting on Canada’s water supply
When we were negotiating CETA [and promoting more beef and pork exports], no one was asking: can Alberta afford to put more pressure on its water, which is under great stress from overuse by the tar sands and climate change droughts? [Can we afford] the dramatic increase in pork -exports [involved in] these trade agreements? Can Lake Winnipeg afford more hog production when it’s already been named the most threatened lake in the world? If there are any scientists who weren’t fired [under Harper], nobody is integrating their concerns or research [on water impacts] into the trade decisions being made. It’s very important that we start to question the way we grow food and the emphasis we’re putting on big factory farms and these exports.
On the impact of trade deals on our water rights
Under CETA, municipalities like Regina that were forced into public-private partnerships [in Regina’s case, to finance its water treatment plant] would now not be allowed to change their minds. If Alberta were to say to oil companies that they’re using too much water and bring in a law to cut water use in half, foreign companies protected by NAFTA, CETA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership would all have the right to sue for financial compensation. There’s a huge investor-state challenge under NAFTA against the -Canadian government [by Lone Pine Resources Inc. for $118.9 million] because Quebec placed a moratorium on fracking in a delicate area of the St. Lawrence. That’s a Canadian company that used its American subsidiary to challenge the ruling.
On Trump’s call to scrap NAFTA and what his presidency would mean for water protections
I think a consensus is growing in the U.S. from Bernie Sanders through Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump that trade and economic globalization haven’t worked. What Trump has done is move the argument to the lowest common denominator. A number of people who are hearing that message have been hurt by these trade deals. He’s anti-EPA and anti-government interference, so I cannot imagine it could be anything but bad for water and the environment.
On sending out an SOS to the country
If there’s one message I want to get across to Canadians, it’s “You think we’re immune from the water problems of the world when you read about children dying or lakes drying up or being covered in blue-green algae. Think again.” We don’t have national drinking water standards. We have inadequate national sewage disposal standards. We haven’t mapped our groundwater we’re dumping whatever we want into it. What kind of stewardship is that? This is a wake-up call.
Maude Barlow joins singer/songwriter Sarah Harmer and discusses her book at the Trinity St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor West, on Friday (September 23), 7 pm. FREE. canadians.org.
ecoholic@nowtoronto | @ecoholicnation
This interview has been condensed and edited.
