The Hillsburgh plant draws 1.113 million litres of water per day, for which they pay $3.71 per million litres. Sources here and here. Annual consumption would be in the 406.245 million range. Do you have a figure for the annual agricultural water consumption in that same watershed?
Certainly for today, that ‘tiny, tiny fraction’ would be 1,113,000/0 , as no one is irrigating their crops right now.
There is no obligation under the WTO agreements or NAFTA that requires us to extract resources. Where free trade comes in is that once a resource has been commoditized it cannot be blocked from export to other countries party to the free trade agreement unless there is a specific reservation in the agreement.
The Nestle problem is a bit of a grey area. My best guess (and it is only a guess) is that in the Nestle example, free trade would not be relevant, for IMHO the issue is not whether Canadian bottled water drawers should be preferred over foreign bottled water drawers, but rather which industry (bottled water or agriculture) should be given preference over the other. The weak point in this analysis is that a water bottler could argue that the drawing of the water is the trigger for commoditization, making free trade applicable, and that preferring local agricultural purposes over bottled water extraction for export violates free trade.
That does not mean that it all is well, for Nestle, Monsanto, Royal Dutch Shell, and a Texan by the name of T. Boone Pickins (you can’t make this shit up) are big on purchasing water rights and then selling back the water to those who have enough money. For those who believe that the “market” will find the best use for a limited resource, this is a good thing. For those, such as myself, who believe that people should have access to water, this is a very bad thing. The Ontario government screwed up by permitting Nestle to draw too much water. Let’s do our best to discourage the Ontario government from considering taking the free market approach to watershed management.
The Great Plains are going dry as they deplete their aquifers, so there will be one hell of a water shortage. Note that they do not manage their aquifers on a sustainable basis, but instead consider underground water to be something to be extracted until it runs out. This has scared the Great Lakes provinces and states, for there have been a number of proposals to draw down the Great Lakes to supply the Great Plains, so they have made an agreement between themselves ( the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement) that prohibits water to be moved out of basin. On the American side, this led to the Great Lakes Compact between the American Great Lakes states, which was then made into a USA federal law.
To allow for bottled water, there is an exemption in the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement the permits out-of-basin withdrawals of water in containers of 2.7 gallons/20 litres or less. That leads us to the question of whether or not GATT, NAFTA and, should EU free trade take place, EEC law would find that bottled water, or bulk water shipped by pipeline or tanker, is a good subject to these free trade laws. I’d say “yes” just as oil and nickel are goods subject to such laws. My opinion is that if something is the object of a commercial transaction, then it would fall under free trade laws unless there was a specific reservation in the agreements. I don’t know if Nestle exports water from Guelph to the USA, by I doubt if they do, for southern Ontario is a big market, whereas Michigan and upper New York State are not, and they already draw water in Michigan and quite a few other places in the north-east quadrant of the USA. But even if they do export, there is no prohibition against it under NAFTA, and no prohibition against it under the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement, so I expect that GATT and NAFTA apply.
In short, international trade agreements do not protect against the drawing of water, and ensure that there is no preference granted between water drawers based on country of export, but there is a regional prohibition of bulk out-of –Great-Lakes-basin transfer of water through a the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement.
Now we get to the issue of bulk water export. One of the pressures that helped lead to the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement was a close call back in 1995, when the Ontario government granted a permit to a Canadian company (Nova Group) to draw 600 billion litres a year of Lake Superior water for shipping to Asia (that’s a bit less than one percent of the annual outflow). That opened a big can of worms concerning bulk water and free trade. Fortunately, the permit was pulled by the Ontario government once environmentalists brought it to the public’s attention, such that no water was ever actually drawn. Since Nova Group was an Ontario company, and since they were exporting to Asia, NAFTA would not have applied, but GATT probably would have. The fire was put out, but it drew attention to the issue of whether or not we should permit bulk water export, or should keep our water for ourselves, for once bulk water export begins, then we will have to compete on a dollar for dollar basis to purchase our own water for our own use, for unless a free trade agreement specifically sets out otherwise, we will no longer able to pick and choose where our goods go vis a vis parties to the agreement, and instead must be willing to compete on the open market between the countries who are party to the free trade agreement.
Add to this that agriculture is an existing use and a vital use, whereas bottled water is neither an existing use nor vital.
Also add to this that much of the water used in irrigation returns to the aquifer, whereas extremely little of the bottled water would be returned to the aquifer that the farmers use.
Sustainable use, folks. Let’s manage for that.
Yes, I’d prefer it if we came around to the view that what’s in the lakes, streams, rivers and underground aquifers is the principal, and the stuff that falls from the sky is what we try to live off.
There are a number of people in our country who seem to have confused the term ‘abundant’ with the term ‘inexhaustible’.
Is there a lot of crop-watering to be done in Erin County in mid-October?
In any case, Ontario agricultural water consumption - as opposed to withdrawal, which is different - is approximately 400 million litres per day (every day of the year, so during growing season it’s far higher.) I find sources cite somewhat different numbers but it’s consistently around 400,000,000 litres a day.
What the Hillsborough plant DRAWS and what it CONSUMES are two different concepts, so I don’t know if it actually consumes a million litres per day. Withdrawal is not consumption. Anyway, the simple fact of the matter is that math does not lie, and bottled water exports to Europe are not going to drain Ontario of water. It’s a risible idea. I doubt the world has enough transportation capacity to do it even if we wanted do.
Of course people also said the 1988 FTA would result in us losing all our water to the USA. And I guess the Paul Gross TV movie was pretty scary. Honestly, free trade deals are not a risk to our water supply. There are plenty of risks to it, but this ain’t one of them.
Read up on bulk water and free trade. If an agreement is not drafted properly, that can be a very big risk to our water supply on the Great Lakes.
The devil is in the details. When it comes to water, it is not that free trade is bad, or that free trade is good, but rather that free trade agreements must be drafted properly to avoid being bad.
This exactly. Le Ministre raises a good point - not that we will lose all of our fresh water to the US, but that once an agreement is reached, there are limitations on changing those agreements, even if conditions change and we suddenly need the resource ourselves.
Wow, what a day in the senate!
What I don’t understand about Mike Duffy’s remarks - how could Deloitte have been telling him his housing expenses were above board when there is a residency requirement for senators? The papers have been on about that for almost a year - how did they miss it?
Holy moly.
Do you believe Duffy? I mean, it’s not like the man has a lot of credibility left, but what a magnificent, wonderful train wreck this is. An absolute Hindenburg of a speech.
I have absolutely no idea who to believe in this mess.
Do I buy his “I was too dumb to know that I did wrong” spiel? No. But that being said, he offers the first rational explanation of why he was given the $90K the Harper’s Chief of Staff.
Regardless of what it does or does not look like, I don’t think a senator (or a member of parliament) should be so severely restricted without a Parliamentary investigation and hearing. I hope that there is one, and that the investigation looks closely at both the accusations against him and his accusations against others.
This is called the eating your own phase.
This has the potential to be one of the most spectacular political flameouts in Canadian history… if Duffy is telling the truth, especially about him having a paper trail. I admit that his “I won’t released my paper trail until people have their day in court” shtick adds a degree of skepticism to my enthusiasm. His “I won’t release the documents now because people have rights” argument is utter nonsense. Mike Duffy isn’t a court of law and nobody has the “right” to have Mike Duffy not show us the goods. He’s withholding the goods for some other reason.
If Duffy has no goods to show, then while he has a strong moral argument against being heaved out of the Senate - it’s ridiculous to eject a legislator from the Senate on the grounds presented - the scandal will not take the government down. It contributes to the general aura of sleaze that might mean defeat in the next election but nobody’s going to demand Stephen Harper resign just because Mike Duffy is butthurt.
But if he DOES have the goods, watch out.
I hope some good comes out of the whole senate scandal - that we finally either abolish the useless institution or fix it to make it useful.
I can think of a couple of reasons for his withholding the goods (if he has such goods).
First, when he talks about this matter or discloses the documents, he has to worry about being sued for libel or for breaching a confidentiality agreement. If he talks or discloses while in the Senate chambers, then he is protected under Parliamentary privilege. If he talks or discloses under oath in a court case, he is protected under litigation privilege.
Second, the matter is not ripe for disclosure. Once there is a formal proceeding taking place to nail his ass to the wall, and he learns the particulars of the case he must meet, there will be opportunity for all the cards to be put on the table, but we are not at that time yet.
Third, disclosure by dribs and drabs, particularly public disclosure outside of a formal proceeding, does little if anything to advance a party’s case, and often just makes a lot of smoke suitable for public entertainment. Remember that his causing a rout of the PMO and the PM will not help him in any way concerning what he will be facing over the housing funds. By not disclosing but hinting at what he could disclose, he keeps open the faint hope that the powers that be will call off the dogs. Once disclosure is made, that faint hope will be extinguished entirely.
I know it’s mean, but I had to laugh when he complained about the possibility of losing his drug plan, given his being a Conservative parliamentarian. Hey, buddy, what’s the problem with relying on universal health care coverage – not good enough for you? To bad provincial and federal politicians did not do a better job at providing public coverage. Upset about having given up your previous private health care coverage when you joined the Senate? It’s this simple: if you had followed the rules, you wouldn’t have put your health benefits at risk. Dumb ass.
That’s OK, Leaffan, economists don’t either. I got into a spirited discussion with a friend about whether or not economics is actually a science; BTW, it’s not. I’m all for cheaper cheese… and a nice Pelee Island gewurtzraminer or a Quails’Gate Pinot Noir to wash it down!
Thing is, he believes he has been following the rules. He even commented about asking the PMO if he was playing by the rules and was assured that he was. Now, if he lied about it, then he deserves everything he gets. Seems to me though that they all tell that they checked and were told that they were acting properly.
Just a point to ponder regarding the misuse of large bodies of freshwater; http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1396
Before agribusiness drained it starting in the Sixties, it bounded roughly 68000 sq km of surface, bigger than Lake Huron.
This is a perfect example of why we as a species probably should be very selective in what we “manage”, whether it’s fish, water or pretty much anything else.
Exactly my read too.
Here’s how it looks to me:
Duffy was playing fast and loose with the residency rules. He checked with the senate leaders, who told him not to worry. He then got called on his residency, and pictures were published of his “primary residence” in PEI beside an unplowed road under 5 feet of snow. The public got pissed.
He got called into Harper’s office, and with Wright present (just the 3 of us!), was told to pay back the money ($90K) because the optics did not look good, and the conservative base were too stupid to understand the arcane senate rules of residency (ie your primary residence is where you say it is, not where you actually live).
When Duffy balked, he was threatened with getting tossed out of the senate on his ear. (stick). Then the possibility of a solution was mooted. (at this point, I think Harper metaphorically left the room, or stuck his fingers in his ears and went “lalalalala”. Plausible deniability? Or Willfull Blindness? Tomato, Tomahto)
Wright then (together with the Harper’s lawyer, Duffy’s lawyer, and some others from the PMO, cooked up the scheme to pay Duffy 90K out of Wright’s personal account and “go easy” on Duffy by re-doing the Senate reports.
Harper sent his ministers out to do the rounds to say that Duffy had done “the honorable thing” and had re-paid the money. Harper did not know THE MEANS BY WHICH Duffy had gotten the money. (Wrights carefully phrased words upon his eventual resignation)
Then someone, somewhere spilled the beans on where the $90k came from. The rest is history as they say.
Have I missed/ misconstrued anything?