Alberta doesn’t, but the ban on water exports was to be nationwide according to the NDP platform.
On the first point - we don’t have fixed election dates at the federal level. Like the Westminster system, an election can be triggered if the Government is defeated in the Commons and the PM advises the Governor General to dissolve Parliament.
Stephen Harper, the Leader of the Official Opposition, has been saying for the past week that the Tories will vote to bring down the government at the first chance they get, on the budget process. According to the arcana of parliamentary process, that key vote will come in the Commons around mid-May. If the government falls and the Prime Minister asks the GovGen for a dissolution (which he would, since the current party standings in the House don’t give him any opportunity to re-form his ministry), the Canada Elections Act sets out the timetable for the election. According to s. 57(1.2)(c), the minimum time for the election campaign is 36 days from the issuance of the writ. So if the government falls in mid-May, the election would likely be held at the end of June.
As for your second question, I’m not so sure that there will be an election right away, nor that there will be a change in government. The key area is Ontario, which has the most seats and is apparently the most volatile. The Conservatives have to make a break-through there to form the government, even a minority one.
All the talk of the election has been premised on the two ideas that the people want another election soon, because of the sponsorship scandal, and that the Tories are leading in Ontario, so it’s in their interest to bring down the government sooner rather than later. However, a recent poll in Ontario casts doubt on both those points.
Last week, the Prime Minister addressed the country in a special broadcast, apologizing for the sponsorship scandal and repeating that he’s doing everything he can to get to the bottom of it. He also emphasised that the Gomery inquiry is still investigating, and argued that it would be unfair to go to the polls on this issue until all the evidence is in and Justice Gomery has given his report. He pledged to call an election within 30 days of the Gomery report, which is anticipated in December.
Since then, he’s been going around the country making what are essentially campaign promises, like promising gobs’o’money for day care programs to provinces that are willing to sign on to the federal program, but pointing out that if the Tories defeat the government on the budget, there’s no guarantee that the day care money will ever arrive. This has had the effect of having Mr. Harper promise to honour the day care funding promises, even though his party opposes the federal program, giving the Libs yet another way to argue that the Tories have a hidden agenda and can’t be trusted - “how can you believe Mr. Harper on this pledge, when it goes against his own party’s platform, etc. etc. [insert Liberal standard distrust Tories rant here].”
The poll that came out in Ontario late this week suggests that the PM’s strategy of delay may be working - the Libs have crept back up on the Tories in Ontario, and people appear divided on the need for an election right now. Of course, if the polls put the Tories ahead and the people divided on the need for a snap election, the Tories might roll the dice, hoping that the dislike for a snap election wouldn’t be a factor once the writ actually drops. However, if the Tories are behind and polls indicate people don’t want the election until after Gomery makes his report, the Tories might re-think the wisdom of bringing down the government right now.
[I wrote all of the above before I went googling for the news article that came out a few days ago that I was going to link to, and find that the Globe & Mail has just posted an article for this morning’s paper setting out much the same analysis. I should apply for a commentator’s job! Here’s the G&M article: [Tory MPs question need for a snap vote](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050502.wxtory02/BNStory/National/).]
You could indeed apply for commentator’s job. Canadian politics seems to be more of an art than a science.
The Tooth, you’re just worrying about our fresh water supply because our major rivers all seem to be getting dangerously low, the glacier is melting much quicker than anticipated, and scare-mongers are saying that Calgary will be out of water in 30 years.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard any forecasts for how long Calgary’s water supply will last. Exporting water just strikes me as a foolish thing to do; we need that stuff, and it’s not as if we can make more later.
Yeah, it’s not as if water just falls out of the sky.
Evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Look it up sometime.
I think resource management’s a little more complicated than 3rd grade science class made it out to be. But thanks for the advice!
Hey, maybe they should be teaching resource management in third grade! Or maybe third graders should be teaching resource management!
(My earlier post didn’t really need a smiley after it, did it?)
Now, I was under the impression that because of NAFTA, once we start exporting water, we can’t stop. Am I mistaken?
But has any Canadian province been selling water to the U.S.? I’ve never heard of such a thing (though I know lack of water is a big, big deal anywhere west of the prairies and east of the Cascade Range).
Canada is the one nation in the entire history of the world that can MOST afford to sell water. Honestly, do you think we are going to run out of it? You do know that Canada doesn’t use one percent of one percent of all its fresh water?
The NDP’s “don’t sell water to the US” bit is not based on logic or reason; it’s just a way to get votes from easily manipulated simpletons. You’re falling for maybe the dumbest plank in any Canadian political party platform.
I’ll be voting NDP in any upcoming election. Hopefully I’ll still be in my London riding, where Irene Mathyssen finished a close second to the Liberal candidate.
Gorsnak, I haven’t been following Saskatchewan politics much since arriving out here in Ontario. Could you summarize what’s gone on since the NDP squeaked past the Saskatchewan Party in the last election? How badly have Lorne Calvert’s prospects fallen?
I don’t know about that, but I do know that much of Canada (and much of the U.S.) lies within the “Empty Quarter” where rainfall is extremely meager. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Nations_of_North_America
If not, it’s not for lack of trying. A company in California was all set to buy water from B.C. when B.C. declared a moratorium on shipping water by marine transport system. The company, Sun Belt Water, threatened to sue (or however it works), making the claim that not selling the water was a NAFTA violation.
http://www.waterbank.com/Newsletters/nws38.html
I can’t find any hard numbers on trade yet, but the above does state that “No other bans on the export of Canadian water were imposed, and commercial trade in water continued by bottles, jugs, tanker trucks and pipelines.” And if you look in the list of references for this article, you’ll find
so it would seem some water’s being sold somewhere. Part of the NDP platform involved making water a resource and not a commodity as NAFTA would have it and thereby banning its export, and that sat well with me. I’d never heard of bulk water sales either, but while I was perusing the party platforms deciding how to cast my vote I came across the issue in question and it seemed a good idea. Why wait until people are really clamoring for it in ten or twenty years to make the decision.
There are other reasons I cast my vote the way I did; I can certainly go for the socially liberal aspects of the NDP platform. But I got a chuckle out of banning water exports, and what the hell? It’s not as if they’ll win in the middle of Calgary, but I might as well show a little moral support.
I’m sorry I don’t have any hard and fast Statistics Canada trade numbers. Finding such things is usually pretty simple.
No.
Better than voting for platforms designed to buy the votes of neoliberal homophobes.
The only really significant event was Hermanson resigning as Sask Party leader, and being replaced by Brad Wall. Wall’s jerked the party a fair ways towards the centre, and is generally seen in a better light than Hermanson was.
Then the budget came down, and it was kinda blah. Here we are, newly in the “have” category, rolling in energy money, and the budget’s the blandest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s not bad, per se, but you’d think we could do more with our newfound prosperity. Amusingly, the Sask Party criticized it for not increasing social spending enough. Here we are in bizzaro world where the Ralph Klein wannabes are saying that the pinko commies aren’t spending enough on welfare. I laughed.
All in all, I think there’s just some fatigue with the NDP who are on what, their 4 consecutive term? 5th? And the Sask Party doesn’t look as scary as it did, and only needs to pick up 2-3 seats to have a working majority. I’ll be pretty shocked if they don’t win.
Since we’re hanging out in Great Debates now, I’m gonna have to ask you for a cite on that.
That figure sounds more like the amount of freshwater available in the world relative to all fresh and salt water in the world.
http://www.sdnpbd.org/sdi/international_days/water_day/2005/content/geo.htm
“Approximately 60% of the country’s freshwater drains to the north, away from the 85 percent of the population living within 300 kilometers of our southern border.”
http://www.wsc.ec.gc.ca/hydrology/main_e.cfm?cname=hydro_e.cfm
As you can see from the flow maps of stream flow, runoff, and terrestrial ecozones, of the water that does not flow south, most heads out through the Great Lakes or B.C.’s coast. There is very little water (less than 50mm runoff per year) in the prairies due north of the great plains states in the USA that have a strong need for water, and which will be desperate for water once they use up their aquifers.
http://www.wsc.ec.gc.ca/hydrology/main_e.cfm?cname=streamflow_e.cfm
http://www.wsc.ec.gc.ca/hydrology/main_e.cfm?cname=runoff_e.cfm
http://www.ec.gc.ca/soer-ree/English/Framework/NarDesc/canada_e.cfm
Our western farmers and communities can make use of what little water they have. If water were exported in bulk from our prairies, (e.g. diversions), that would only make the water they rely upon more scarce, and more costly. That would not bode well for economic development for them. In short, either we can benefit from our water, or the Americans can benefit from it, but in the prairies there is not enough to permit both (to give one example, why should we send water to the US to grow US crops to feed US cattle, when we could simply grow Canadian crops to feed Canadian cattle, and then export the beef to the USA – which of course raises another issue).
http://www.ec.gc.ca/water/images/manage/use/ratio-map_e.htm
As far as major diversions from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains go, such major diversions would cause serious economic harm for communities along the Great Lakes / St. Lawrence system. Water intakes would have to be significantly extended and shipping lanes would have to be dredged. In anticipation of such problems, the governors of the Great Lake states are making an agreement to prohibit major out of basin diversions that result in a net loss of water to the basin, and a parallel agreement is being made between them and the Canadian Great Lakes provinces.
http://www.cglg.org/projects/water/annex2001Implementing.asp
Above all the economic issues lay the environmental issues. What it comes down to is that major diversions are environmentally devastating. Let people use the water where it is, rather than move the water.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/water/en/manage/removal/e_FAQ.htm
Serious typo in paragraph two above: south should be north, to read "As you can see from the flow maps of stream flow, runoff, and terrestrial ecozones, of the water that does not flow north, most heads out through the Great Lakes or B.C.’s coast. "